Rain, rain, go AWAY!

I'm not entirely sure about the impact of global warming, but it sure seems like 2009 has seen more than its share of baseball and soccer games affected by mother nature. We don't live in Seattle, but rather in a close-in suburb of a major east coast city. Our playing field space is precious and probably not sufficient for a town of about 12,000 and all the baseball, softball, soccer, football, lacrosse, rugby, ultimate frisbee, etc. that is played. The "nice" fields must be nursed through the season because of all the traffic, and sometimes this leads to controversial decisions about when to close them. It seems the "Field Czar" is probably one of the most powerful people in town, given his absolute power over usage (and lighting!) issues. We should probably be considered an upper middle class town, not exceedingly wealthy, not terribly working class overall, but somewhat diverse economically, and highly taxed from a real estate standpoint. So, what do we do when it rains? We struggle. Fields are closed at the drop of a hat. Games are cancelled. Attempts to move indoors on the fly are sometimes successful, sometimes not. So, you would think we are a great candidate for artificial turf, no? Well, that one was put up for a referendum a couple of years ago, and despite the shifting demographic toward a younger population with school-age kids, it was soundly defeated. Some were concerned about health issues. Most were concerned about money. As I said, taxes are high and people are fairly fed up with the increases. Sure, they will swallow hard and vote in favor of things like improving the schools from an academic standpoint, but dumping more money into sports wasn't going to fly. So, here we are with our over-taxed natural grass. A little bit of rain (which we've had a lot of this year) stops us in our tracks and we are consigned to playing wii indoors. I guess we'll just pray for a drought next year.