The Front Row with MARK NELKE September 9, 2010

In the newspaper business, we tend to look at certain games at certain times in the day a little differently than the general public.

Like games which end on deadline. The Seattle Mariners have been a good deadline team in recent years, because they don't score many runs, and their games go quickly.

While the Mariner fans in our office might be happy to see Seattle come back in the ninth and force extra innings, in the sports department we let out a collective groan, not knowing if the game will go on all night, and we have to invent a new lead sports story at the last minute.

The Dodgers, on the other hand, seem to be a bad deadline team. Their games tend to go on and on, and it's not unlike them to cough up a lead and have to go to extra innings, then drag it out some more, then inevitably lose anyway.

I was thinking about this the other night while I was at Coeur d'Alene High, watching for lightning strikes when I would normally be watching the Viking football team play Moses Lake.

The game was delayed by lightning midway through the first quarter for a total of 1 hour, 22 minutes. The first half ended at 9:41 p.m. - which is usually about the time we have completed our interviews and are headed back to the office. They fast-forwarded through halftime, and started the second half about 5 minutes later.

With 5:58 left in the third quarter, more lightning was spotted, forcing another 30-minute delay at 10:05 p.m. At this point, I was starting to wonder if this game was going to end in time for us to get it into the paper before deadline. But a moment later, the Moses Lake coach, weary of another lengthy delay, chose to concede the game.

I wasn't going to argue with him. The game wasn't going to resume until at least 10:35 p.m., still with 1 1/2 quarters left to play. And as it turned out, you could see more lightning on the way home, so it could have been closer to 11 before they started playing again.

If even then. We could have been out there all night, watching the skies for lightning. I never expected to see, at a football game, a gizmo which could measure lightning strikes, and their closeness to the area, until I saw Mindy Newby, Coeur d'Alene High's athletic trainer, pointing one at the clouds off to the northeast.

Then I realized I was in her way.

But who knew? Besides, how often does a high school football game around here end after deadline, especially with these 7 p.m. starts?

If they had chosen to eventually finish the game at a reasonable hour, we probably could have gotten away with holding the paper long enough to get a story in - then again, the presses are waiting, followed by the newspaper carriers. That would have been better than having to resort to sneaking in one line which read: "Coeur d'Alene led Moses Lake (insert score here) at Viking Field in the fourth quarter of a nonleague football game delayed numerous times by lightning strikes spotted in the area."

But fortunately, it didn't come to that.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via e-mail at mnelke@cdapress.com.