SEATTLE -- The roof at T-Mobile Park means that despite May showers in the forecast Saturday, there was no threat of a rain delay. The sprinklers stayed under control. No bees were in sight, or cats, or squirrels, or anything else that could run on the field and stop a Major League Baseball game.
That should have made a delay impossible.
It didn’t.
After Rowdy Tellez popped out to end the third inning of Seattle's game against Minnesota, the Twins ran off the field and the Mariners went out to their spots. But as Bryce Miller began to throw his warmup pitches in preparation for his fourth inning of work, the fire alarm at T-Mobile Park began to sound. Emergency lights began to flash all around the ballpark, as players and fans alike realized just what was going on.
There wasn’t any sort of panic in the crowd, but after a minute or so of the alarm continuing, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli and first baseman Kody Clemens -- who was set to lead off the frame -- went to talk to home-plate umpire Austin Jones and crew chief Bill Miller. After a brief discussion, Miller turned on his microphone and announced the lights made for an unsafe situation, officially putting the game into a delay.
The delay lasted around 10 minutes, as the scoreboard showed an announcement that T-Mobile Park was “currently experiencing and investigating an incident.”
Eventually, the alarm cut off -- then turned back on, just as the Mariners, who had congregated on the field as if for a pitching change, began to walk back to their spots.
After a few minutes of intermittent alarms, the technical staff got things under control for good -- with a brief exception in Leody Taveras’ at-bat in the bottom of the fourth, when it came back for a few seconds.
After play resumed, the official scorer announced that the 10-minute delay officially would not count toward the time of game.
But for the crowd in attendance, it’ll be a weird story to remember for a while.