DENVER — The start of Thursday night’s game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Colorado Rockies was delayed for 1 hour and 50 minutes while members of the Coors Field grounds crew shoveled piles of hail from a late-afternoon storm into wheelbarrows and used leaf blowers to dry the remaining moisture from the outfield grass.
A heavy thunderstorm three hours before the scheduled first pitch turned the steps from the Dodgers’ dugout to the clubhouse into a water feature. Rain then morphed into macadamia-nut-sized hail that pelted the stadium, leaving what looked like foot-high snowdrifts on the floor of each dugout.
But once the crazy weather conditions cleared and the field was deemed playable, baseball’s most hitter-friendly park returned to its normal self, yielding a flurry of hits and runs, sending outfielders scurrying into the cavernous gaps and pitchers ducking for cover.
