Rain, rain go away

Today marks the 21st anniversary of umpires Brandon Cooney and Steve Cummings ejecting a groundskeeper from a Class A game.

The groundskeeper is Lakewood’s Bill Butler, who gets tossed when he tells the umpires that his crew needs to cover an already saturated field during the BlueClaws’ South Atlantic League game against Kannapolis.

The ejection comes with Lakewood leading 3-0 in the fifth inning.

With rain coming down and his tarp crew ready to go to work, Butler emphatically tells the umpires that the field needs to be covered – and it needs to be covered now, especially since the field already is a mess after days of rain leading up to the game.

Bill Butler

“By the fifth inning, it was getting really sloppy … there was no window (of clear weather) in sight,” Butler tells Greg Giombarrese in a 2020 podcast. “I just didn’t want anybody getting hurt. I also was responsible for our tarp crew, which is sitting out there in the lightning.”

With that, Butler goes onto the field to talk with the umpires.

“They said, ‘Bill, we really don’t want you out here right now and I kind of had some harsh words for them, and they tossed me.

“I wasn’t trying to show them up. I was just trying to say, ‘Hey, guys, look it’s dangerous.’ I knew better than anybody what the field could handle and what it couldn’t. … I wasn’t trying to be a hero or trying to show anybody up, but it was getting out of hand and I spoke up.”