There wasn’t much Good and a whole lot of Bad in Sunday’s Ugly 8-1 Dodgers loss to the Chicago Cubs at an absolutely drenched Wrigley Field on Sunday afternoon – a game which should have never even started and was finally suspended with one out in the bottom of the fourth inning.

But for as Bad and Ugly as it was, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts actually wanted it to go for another five outs before the eventual two hour and twenty-one minute rain delay.

“I think everyone was in agreement that we wanted to squeeze in five knowing the conditions weren’t going to be ideal. I just didn’t like in that fourth inning to stop the game right there after we already faced a couple batters, and then the field became sort of unplayable,” Roberts told reporters postgame. “But it was tough and we were hoping to just squeeze in five and, you know, move on, but that just wasn’t the case.

As every baseball fan knows, a Major League Baseball game becomes an ‘official game’ after five innings. And with a (then) 5-0 Cubs lead, that five-inning requisite would have been met with the final out of the top half of the fifth inning. In other words, Roberts had already thrown in the (very wet) towel in this nightmare of a game.

As for the Good, although there wasn’t much for Roberts’ team, there was some.

In the top of the sixth inning and following the long rain delay, Dodgers international superstar designated hitter Shohei Ohtani roped a two-out triple into right-center field for his first triple of the season. The Bad news is that there was no one on base at the time.

The only other Good news occurred in the top of the eighth inning when, after a five-pitch walk by Dodgers future Hall of Famer Mookie Betts, Ohtani bounced a double off the Wrigley Field bricks in right field, allowing the speedy Betts to score from first base for the Dodgers only run of the never-should-have-been-played game.

Why the need to ‘get this one in,’ as they say? Because it is/was the last time that the Dodgers play/played the Cubs at ‘The Friendly Confines’ this season. As such, there would be no opportunity to make it up in a doubleheader.

That said, the Cubs and Dodgers do have a three-game series at Dodger Stadium September 9-11, with a scheduled off day for both teams on September 12. As such, the two teams could have had a make-up game at The Ravine, with the Cubs being the home team in that make-up game, much like the Dodgers and Padres did in the two-game series that they played in South Korea. Granted, Chicago would not benefited from retail and parking proceeds, but surely something could have been worked out between the two storied franchised, as they did with San Diego in Seoul.

Fire away.

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