Chicago Tribune, 4/15/1950
“Weather Has No Favorites; All Games Off”
It was 2-below this morning here in Virginia. Even colder in some parts of the state.
I know this because I, like many of my Virginia friends, took a photo of the thermometer. Evidence. It’s like a pseudo-selfie.
It was 117 degrees in Sydney, Australia yesterday. So, there are degrees of miserability. (Miserability. Not a word. Should be.)
It was a cold, snowy spring in 1950.
On April 13, a snowstorm blanketed much of the east coast from Virginia northward. On April 14, it was still cold … and still snowing. Baseball season hadn’t officially started – Opening Day was four days away – but the teams were just back from spring training and exhibition games were on their calendars.
It was so cold and so snowy, they cancelled all the games.
Every single one.
Lansing State Journal, 4/14/1950
Baltimore Sun, 4/15/1950
Muncie Star Press, 4/14/1950
Hanover (Penn) Evening Sun, 4/15/1950
Even the Cubs-White Sox exhibition in Chicago was cancelled and you’d think a little cold would be no big deal to them.
The day before, with temps in the 40s, the Giants-Indians game went on in Kansas City and fans started small fires to stay warm. Wait, what? You could do that?!
They also cancelled the Dodgers-Yankees game at Ebbets Field – a rematch of the 1949 World Series. But, someone, somehow, convinced a few Dodgers to pose – uncomfortably – for a photo with a snowman. (You can see in their eyes that these players are wondering if they get paid enough to do this.)
From L to R: Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson on the mound at Ebbets Field, April 14, 1950 via Cut4.
“The Dodgers showed up and promptly built a snowman on the pitcher’s mound and its fate was the same as most Dodger pitchers in recent years – it didn’t last long.” – Associated Press
Meanwhile, the day before in Pittsburgh, the Pirates-Yankees game was too cold for the young players, but 76-year-old Honus Wagner, then a Pirates coach, was at Forbes Field, despite the cold and despite a bad hip. “He was so homesick, he just had to get to the park,” his wife told a reporter.
Rochester NY Democract & Chronicle, 4/14/1950
Coldest major league game on record is thought to be the Atlanta Braves at Colorado Rockies on April 23, 2013. Game-time temperature at first pitch? 23 degrees.
Now that teams are spread from coast to coast, and some even play inside, there’s very little chance that weather will shut down every game. Thank goodness.
In the meantime, there’s nothing funny about cold weather. Except this.
The Baseball Bloggess 
Great laugh! Wild twist at the end!😳
Stay warm!
The coldest game ever played was in 2013 in Colorado. Game time temperature? 23 degrees. Brrrrr.
Have attended waiting while it snowed several inches before they called it! That is how we acquired our first Rockies blanket 19 years ago…still looks great, wears like iron!
This was before the World Series involved night games in November lasting until midnight or later in cities like Chicago and New York.
And made possible by the media conglomerates to whom advertising revenue mandates a higher priority to “prime time“ events than the comfort of players/fans.
College baseball doesn’t get a respite — their season starts in February. At Virginia games, there’s free hot chocolate if the temperature is 40 degrees or colder, which happens a few times each season. I sat through a game a few years back where they played through sleet. I was miserable. But, I did it just to say I did!
Before I permanently moved south, I remember the cold, miserable, rainy (bordering on freezing rain) in Old Orchard Beach, Maine for the 1984 debut of the Indians ill fated Triple A team, the Maine Guides. Many lessons from that brief chapter in minor league history, the first of which is, when it’s not cold, snowing, or raining on the Maine Coast, when the air cools about sundown, a blanket of fog covers the ballpark. Live and learn, I guess.
You spurred me to look up the Maine Guides and Old Orchard Beach (you forgot to mention the roller coaster!) and I was delighted by the feature story on the Maine Guides that ran in Sports Illustrated in 1984:
“To paraphrase Mark Twain,” says pitcher Jeff Barkley, ” ‘The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in Old Orchard Beach.’ ”
You can find the SI story here: https://www.si.com/vault/1984/07/09/620427/its-the-maine-attraction
It’s a great story and I’m so happy you mentioned it! Thank you!
Leave it to the Bloggess to find some frigidly fun facts. Thank you.
Hi Jim … well, you know, we in Virginia don’t do cold as well as you do in North Dakota! :)
Spent the New Year in Chicago’s -7 degree weather but somehow feel colder at -2 here. Appreciated the closing cartoon. Spring and spring training cannot come too soon.
Right! I have often said that the cold winter wind here often feels much colder than it does in North Dakota. Glad you’re home … and glad that it will be in the 60s some time next week! :)
Here in MN as I write it’s a balmy +25F. (I think it’s trying to warm enough to snow). Folks here have scoffed when I’ve mentioned it gets cold in VA. They’re unclear on the effects of humidity, less densely insulated buildings, etc. Likewise they suffer in the summer when it occasionally hits triple digits here. Not that it’s not uncomfortable, but neither is it the ‘swampy’ feeling of my younger days.
Things are definitely not built to withstand Minnesota-North Dakota cold here in Virginia and I’m not built for it either. I always feel like the cold wind here cuts right to the bone. And, yes, a hot day in North Dakota never seemed quite so bad as the heavy heat of a humid Virginia summer (plus, things never cool down at night here as they do back there).
Didn’t think I’d ever say I feel blessed to be on work travel in Seattle where it’s a balmy 43 degrees this morning.
They promise temps in the 60s by next weekend. :)
I bet that Ebbets Field snowman can throw a better fastball than I can.
How about that snide comment about Dodger pitching from the Associated Press? I thought that was pretty funny — after all, the Dodgers had just been to the World Series and two of their starting pitchers were All-Stars in 1950.
Quite the burn! Of course, if those guys transported that snowman to a freezer, he could last quite a long time.
-2 in Virginia is pretty damn cold. Of course, you’re going to warm up. We’re going to go from 30 above today to minus twenty by Friday night. At least the drought is still in effect so we won’t get too much snow.
We got to 70 last week … now it’s back in the teens. At least we’re above zero.
It was cold here in Kentucky, too. Reminded me a little too much of living in Michigan. Can’t wait for spring and baseball season.
Just a few weeks til college ball … yay!