No need to pour gas on this soggy spring

At least no one has burned down an entire school.

Or turned a batter’s box into a Superfund site.

Unfortunately, those would have to be considered highlights of the prep baseball and softball seasons in North Idaho.

The “perfect storm” combination of record snow in February, followed by incessant rain, left playing fields soaked this spring.

Press sports reporter Jason Elliott put his magnifying glass to various team schedules throughout the region and came up with a startling stat.

Elliott, who has been covering sports in the area for almost two decades, couldn’t find a high school baseball program that had endured less than five postponements due to rain or wet, unplayable fields.

“In this climate, with winter snow and then some moisture in spring, it’s going to happen,” Elliott said, “but this year has been the worst I can remember for games called off.”

You can’t fool Mother Nature, as the saying goes, and the old gal has made playing ball pretty difficult this year.

A FEW years ago, I was hosting a sports talk show in central Illinois and a caller rang the program to ask: “Why don’t we produce major league ballplayers like California? We have a lot of great athletes in Illinois.”

I was speechless for a second, then finally replied: “Was that a serious question?”

Think about it.

In the northern half of the United States, you’re almost certain to see snow and then rain — including vicious thunderstorms in many places.

Spring sports become stop-and-go affairs, with workouts forced indoors and plenty of games called off because of rain or soggy fields.

Of course, the kids want to play no matter the conditions, but wet ballfields are dangerous.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I went to high school in California’s Santa Clara Valley, and I don’t remember a single spring rainout during the entire four years.

Any coach will tell you that being able to practice and play on a regular schedule for several months gives kids a huge advantage over their four-season counterparts — in Kootenai County, for instance — who must fight the elements just to squeeze in some games.

Schools around here often schedule doubleheaders for Friday, just so they can keep Saturday open in case of postponements.

IT’S PRETTY obvious that keeping fields in the playing shape across rough-weather regions is a huge help.

Parents and volunteers deserve huge applause for the work they put in to help coaches and other school employees in the battle against Ma Nature.

Elsewhere, though, there have been cases this spring of taking that challenge way too far.

A coach in Clearfield, Utah (just north of Salt Lake City) tried to imitate an old groundskeeper’s trick by drying out a few wet spots with a liberal application of diesel fuel.

Unfortunately, this genius didn’t even try to burn off the fuel, and the entire area is now hazardous because of deadly fumes — and needless to say, unusable.

Some parents in Ridgefield, Conn., actually DID burn the gasoline they’d used to drench an area between second and third base.

The result was a hell of a fire, and a toxic, gas-soaked infield that had to be dug up at a cost of $50,000.

The good news is that nobody around here has tried that gas blaze strategy to wedge in an extra game or two.

Teams have just done their best when diamonds are available.

This is where we live.

Hey, if your boy is the next Derek Jeter, maybe you should move to Arizona.

As for us, maybe climate change will make scheduling easier in seasons to come.

Or not.

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball once monthly during the off season.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com