Culture

Poop and Rain Flood Delays Oakland Baseball Game

The Oakland Athletics were supposed to take the field against the visiting Minnesota Twins for the third game of their series -- with potential playoff implications on the line -- Saturday around 1:05 p.m. local time, but this is what the visitors dugout at the O.Co Coliseum looks like. 

By Connor Simpson
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The Oakland Athletics were supposed to take the field against the visiting Minnesota Twins for the third game of their series -- with potential playoff implications on the line -- Saturday around 1:05 p.m. local time, but this is what the visitors dugout at the O.Co Coliseum looks like.

That picture of comes via Twins pitcher Glen Perkins, who seems excited to potentially hang out in there once the game finally starts, if it does at all.

The pipes inside the the stadium backed up on Saturday following some unusually heavy rain. "It’s flowing like lava," Oakland catcher Kurt Suzuki told the San Francisco Chronicle's Susan Slusser. "It was like a sewage volcano,'' Oakland reliever Ryan Cook told the San Jose Mercury News' John Hickey, echoing his teammate. "The sound it makes is amazing," Suzuki said.

The Coliseum is 22 feet below sea level and occasionally floods after heavy rain.thanks to some poorly designed pipe placement -- "the drainoff pipes and the coaches’ room pipes cross," an Oakland employee told Slater. The Athletics said an inch of heavy rain fell within a single hour at one point Saturday, which is unusual. If you need a visual aide explaining the whether situation today, Oakland pitcher Brett Anderson has you covered.

Thankfully the sewage is restricted to the coach's area, as Slusser explains:

There is no sewage in the dugouts – you do always have to ask here – but because of backups in the pipes because of rain runoff, the bathrooom/shower area in the A’s coaches’ room has flooded with sewage. This is the third sewage incident at the Coliseum this year, if you’re keeping track.

The game is scheduled to start at 3:00 p.m. local time, but it's raining again. If Oakland wins, and the Texas Rangers lose to the Kansas City Royals, Oakland clinches their division title and ensures a birth into the playoffs.

Update 6:11 p.m. Eastern The game has begun. Good luck, Athletics fans. Hopefully the raiding stink doesn't thwart your playoff plans.

Correction Oakland is not, in fact, 23 miles below sea level. Apologies extended to those who were briefly shocked to learn Oakland joined Atlantis at the bottom of the sea.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.