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MORGANTOWN -- We've heard a whole lot about the NIL money that's been tossed around to college athletes these days but one suspects if you'd have asked the West Virginia baseball players after they beat Oklahoma, 9-3, on a Sunday for the ages, they would have given the NIL money up for an hourly wage.
See, a storm that had been expected in mid-afternoon led to them moving the 1:30 p.m. starting time to 11 a.m. in an effort to get the game in before the rain. But the storm arrived early and led to a 4 hour and 30-minute rain delay.
Now if the fans who stayed around -- and there were more than you might expect, considering the circumstances -- thought they put in a long day, consider that the team had a 6:30 a.m. wakeup call -- and wound-up spending 11 hours at the ballpark.
What did they do during the down time when the storm hit in the bottom of the fourth inning with WVU already leading 6-0, meaning they certainly wanted to play on? Play had to be stopped and the teams were sent to the locker room.
Talk about sitting on a lead.
One might wonder what they did during the delay.
"Some things I could probably tell you, some things I probably can't," Manager Randy Mazey said, jokingly.
What he did note was that strength coach Kelly Cosgrove and trainer Stephen Rozier really step up their game at times like that, making sure that guys' have proper nutrition and drinks.
"We worry about nutrition," Mazey said. "If you don't, it's a long day. We had a 6:30 wakeup call and didn't get out of here until 11 hours later.
But you also have to stay focused on the task at hand, especially when you lead the Big 12 by two games with six games to play.
"The natural tendency is when you are sitting there, laying on the couch with a six-run lead, you can relax … but I don't think our guys did that," Mazey said.
The rain delay did turn freshman catcher Logan Sauve, part of a deep freshman class that has distinguished itself all year, into a hero … the heroics coming just before the rain delay and coming out of it.
"The strike 'em out, throw 'em out double play was probably the biggest part of the game," Mazey would say. "To fall behind 3-0 to their best hitter, to get a double play to end that inning before the rain delay was the biggest play before 2 p.m. today."
Noah Short, who would get the win in relief despite throwing just six pitches, had just entered the game in the third with WVU ahead, 5-0, one out, a runner on base and the Sooners' best hitter at the plate in Dakota Harris.
But Short made, well, short work of it, and Sauve's throw cut down the steal attempt on the pitch and they went to the dugout … and then to the clubhouse for the rain delay.
Sauve was the leadoff hitter coming off of the long delay and wasted no time making the next biggest play of the game, hitting the first pitch over the right field fence for his third home run.
"We had that big delay and we tried to stay active in the locker room to not get down," Sauve said. "When I came back out, I just tried to stay loose and attacked the first fastball I got."
"Usually, the first team to score carries momentum, so when it's 6-0, it can go either go to extend the lead or they can catch the lead," Mazey said. "Sauve hitting the first pitch for home run coming out of the rain delay was really important."
Do not, however, begin believing that rain delays are totally boring, what with hot dogs and beer right behind your seat and with a baseball history of crazy things going on to entertain the fans during delays.
The king of the rain delay was former Baltimore Orioles catcher Rick Dempsey, who put together a pantomime routine that always had fans roaring.
Dempsey had the seed planted in 1977 when he and Sparky Lyle were flipping baseballs to fans in the stands during a rain delay. Lyle told him he'd like to expand on it with a routine but it wouldn't look good if he got hurt.
In his 2017 book "If These Walls Could Talk: Baltimore Orioles" Dempsey told the tale of his greatest moments in Fenway Park.
"There was one baseball left on the tarp and I said to myself, I'm going to run out there and grab that baseball and get this whole stadium screaming. The place was packed. I ran out there and people started to cheer a little bit. The organist started playing 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,'" he wrote.
"As I skated around the tarp, everyone started to sing with me. I ran around the bases and ended up throwing the baseball to the group that sang the loudest and that was it.'
He thought.
"I went into the clubhouse and was drying off. All of a sudden, the people in the stadium started pounding on the grandstands with feet. They were chanting, 'We want Dempsey. We want Dempsey.'"
Infielder Rich Dauer urged him to go back out and throw them some more.
"No. You know what I'm going to do? The pantomime of Babe Ruth calling his home run. Babe Ruth used to be with the Red Sox. They'll love that.
"I put a pillow in my shirt so I could look a little bit like Babe Ruth. I went to home plate and pointed to the stands and everyone started to cheer, as if I had already hit a home run.
"I took two mighty swings, twisting my body as far as it would go. Then I 'hit' the long drive to straightaway centerfield and started to take the home-run trot. Everybody just went crazy. The people were screaming as if I had just hit a home run to win the seventh game of the World Series.
"I went around the bases and slid into home plate, making a big wave as I sloshed across the tarp. I declared myself safe, the crowd went nuts and I walked off the field completely drenched."
A star was born, perhaps just as Sauve may have had his star-is-born moment against Oklahoma.
You can find Rick Dempsey's rain delay act on YouTube and while there you might want to look up a Pirates' groundskeeper member being caught in the tarp and rescued by Andrew McCutchen or Phillies' groundskeeper suffering a similar fate with some interesting commentary by announcers.