The Chicago Cubs grounds crew lost a little bit of dignity and the players came very close to losing a game Tuesday night, partly thanks to … Obamacare.
Wrigley Field was drowned out Tuesday night when a sudden rainstorm overwhelmed the Cubs’ understaffed grounds crew, which was recently reorganized in response to the Affordable Care Act’s definition of a full-time worker. The Cubs restructured “game-day personnel, job descriptions and work limits” last winter, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, to keep seasonal employees under the ACA’s full-time worker definition of 130 hours worked per month.
With the Cubs up 2-0 against the San Francisco Giants and just 4 1/2 innings left, a rainstorm took officials by surprise. By the time the umpires called for the tarp, the field was already wet. Despite the crowd chanting, “Pull! Pull!” the understaffed grounds crew was unable to unfurl the tarp over the entire field. After a 4 hour, 34-minute delay the game was called off, apparently handing the Cubs a win.
Off-the-record sources with the Cubs indicated to the Sun-Times that the club’s response to Obamacare “had a direct and obvious impact” on what played out. (And what wasn’t played, it seems.)
Many have argued that the ACA incentivizes businesses to hire part-time workers for full-time jobs, to reduce the cost of an employee. According to June’s national jobs report, while 288,000 jobs were created that month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that full-time jobs decreased by 523,000 and part-time jobs soared by 800,000 to more than 28 million. In July, the BLS recorded that the 7.5 million people who are involuntarily employed as part-time workers “was unchanged” from the June data. While the ACA is likely not the only factor responsible for the uptick in part-time workers, the law of unintended consequences is never far behind government policies.
But Obamacare isn’t just costing people high-quality full-time work, it is also messing with our sports box scores.
The Giants protested the game based on a rule which states a game can be suspended then resumed again due to a “malfunction of a mechanical field device under control of the home club.” The Cubs’ tarp fell under these guidelines, Major League Baseball agreed. The Giants and Cubs faced off again Thursday evening, but the Cubs won 2-1.
Damn Yankee government policies screwing with my baseball.
Watch the Cubs grounds crew struggle with their tarp here:
