Game four of baseball’s American League Championship Series between the Cleveland Guardians and Tampa Bay Rays has been postponed until Saturday, Major League Baseball said.
Rain lashed Cleveland for hours on Friday, soaking the Guardians’ Progressive Field.
Officials initially announced a delay to the scheduled start time, but as light rain continued grounds crew were unable to ready the field for the game.
A scattering of stalwart fans watched as workers tried to clear standing water from the warning track and dumped water from the tarp protecting the infield.
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But the showers continued and wind picked up. About an hour after the original scheduled start time Major League Baseball announced that the game would be played on Saturday, with game five to follow in Cleveland on Sunday.
The Guardians hold a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series and have a chance to finish off the top-seeded Rays at home.
However, the series is now on a tight schedule, since the teams will travel back to Florida for games six and seven if necessary on Monday and Tuesday.
The Rays are chasing their first World Series title, having come up short in the Fall Classic in 2008 and 2020.
Cleveland are out to end the longest active title drought in MLB, having last won it all in 1948. Cleveland have been to the World Series four times since then and come up empty, most recently in 2016.
The winners of the series will take on the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series starting on October 23.
The Brewers swept the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers 4-0 in the National League Championship Series.
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