Perhaps they made a mistake when building this facility in not taking
a page from the Arizona playbook. A retractable dome stadium. You
could play with it mainly open air, but you have options when you have
weather like this. Close the dome and play on.
I am going to guess that money would have prevented that from being
a real option if that stadium does not get some really heavy use other
than the CWS. Still would have been a much better solution.
Maybe, since travel is not what it once was, a venue with a dome should
be considered as a host site. I think they currently have a very long
term contract to stay there, but these weather delays are hell!
I suspect it’s a WHOLE lot more expensive to build a retractable dome. This is a wonderful park, but let’s remember it is built for an even that only last two weeks a year & isn’t full for most of that.
Creighton uses TDA for home games but that’s not much. They played 21 games there this year with several rainouts.
TDA cost $128 million. A roof probably quadruples that. Baseball has particular issues because not only do you need to cover a larger area than a football field, but the roof has to be high enough that every popup won’t hit the roof.
To be honest, they have an unlimited time to finish the tournament. Yes, they have the final three games scheduled, but it would not have to start then. If ESPN wants to pay for a dome, then I say fine. Otherwise, it’s going to work out eventually and the games will be played.
Fans are impatient. That’s their nature. None of them would pony up the money for such a stadium because they can’t afford it. And while ESPN needs the programming, it’s not so necessary that they want to pony up the money, either.