Phillies on playing in a smoke-filled ballpark: ‘It felt like Gotham’

When Phillies center fielder Brandon Marsh was roaming the outfield at Citizens Bank Park on Tuesday night, he looked up at the stands. He couldn’t see the second deck. Lingering smoke from the Canadian wildfires filled the air with a cloudy haze.

Marsh said it didn’t have much of an impact on his at-bats, or his ability to track balls. But it definitely wasn’t ideal.

“It was noticeably different out there,” he said Wednesday. “It felt like Gotham. It was dark. The lights really couldn’t do their job.”

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He wasn’t the only one who was taken aback. The haze was bad enough by Wednesday afternoon that Major League Baseball ended up postponing the Phillies-Tigers game to 6:05 p.m. Thursday. The Yankees-White Sox game in New York was also postponed.

The air quality index in Philadelphia was at 185, which is considered unhealthy. Philadelphia health officials issued a “code red” alert for the city, adding in a statement that “the air is unhealthy to breathe, and some members of the general public may experience health effects.”

In the hours before the postponement, few players were on the field and in the dugout. Marsh said he planned to spend as little time outside as possible. He joked that in some ways, it seemed apocalyptic.

“I’ve been prepping for this since I was 6 years old,” Marsh said. “I’ve been playing Call of Duty. I’ve been playing zombies for years now.”

Taijuan Walker, the winning pitcher in Tuesday night’s 1-0 victory over Detroit, said the air quality didn’t impact his outing — an assertion that was backed up by the Tigers’ total of two hits in his seven innings — but noticed an unusual smell when he was on the mound.

“It started smelling like a fire,” Walker said. “And I thought that was kind of weird. As the game was going on, I kind of noticed it. It smelled kind of smoky.”

Infielder Drew Ellis noticed his eyes were starting to sting around the sixth or seventh inning Tuesday night. Backup catcher Garrett Stubbs didn’t notice as much of a difference but said that’s because he grew up in California, where wildfire smoke is more prevalent.

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“I feel personally congested, but I think that’s just my own allergies,” Stubbs joked.

Like Stubbs, injured first baseman Rhys Hoskins, also a California native, is used to these conditions.

“You smell it and you see the haze,” Hoskins said. “I don’t feel like it’s as bad today, here at least, as it was at points [Tuesday]. But you feel it in your lungs, right? There’s some pretty wild ones out in California just because it’s been so dry there the past 10-15 years. But it’s pretty wild that a good portion of the northern part of the country is seeing effects of wildfires. It’s terrible.

“They obviously tell you to stay inside as much as you can, just because it’s not good to be outside. I don’t think we’re approaching that just quite yet. I know they’re encouraging people to stay inside. But that’s some of the stuff that we get out there.”

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All of this is to say that MLB probably made the right decision in postponing Wednesday’s game. In the best conditions, it’s hard enough to hit a 98-mph fastball, or track down a baseball that is coming toward you at 105 mph. Doing it when you can’t see, or are having trouble breathing, seems particularly unfair.

“I don’t know anything about air quality,” said Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski. “I’m not an expert on it. So I have to look at how other people guide us, and it was a situation where MLB and the experts feel it has now reached a point where it’s unhealthy for people to be outside. So we’ll go along with what they say.”

The smoke is expected to linger in the Philadelphia region until at least early Thursday. When asked whether he expects Thursday’s game to be played, Dombrowski said, “From what we hear.”