Total Eclipse of the Park: The Guardians' home opener coincides with a rare solar eclipse

CLEVELAND – Confused birds will start chirping. Drivers stuck in a limitless flow of traffic will stop honking. The temperature will drop. Sluggers whacking batting practice at Progressive Field will pause for a cosmic break.

On April 8 at 3:13 PM ET, the spring skies over downtown Cleveland will play host to a total solar eclipse as the moon's shadow moves across the center of the country and eclipse chasers rush to find the perfect spot to witness the spectacle.

The orbits of the Sun, Earth and Moon will align so that the Moon will block the Sun's entire disk, casting darkness along a path that will stretch from Mexico to Dallas to Little Rock to Indianapolis to Cleveland to Buffalo to Caribou , Maine. The phenomenon occurs every 18 to 24 months, but usually over vast oceans or uninhabited areas such as Antarctica.

This one is headed for the spotlight and is also on a collision course with the Cleveland Guardians' home opener.

For two years, Cleveland officials have planned an event in which the ensemble performs its performance millions of miles from front-row seats on the shore of Lake Erie. The showcase is expected to draw visitors to Cleveland from Canada, France, Ireland and Zimbabwe, plus states near and far. The city will not return to the path of totality until 2444.

To grant the Guardians an extension for their ongoing ballpark renovations, the league booked them on an 11-day, three-city trip through Oakland, Seattle and Minneapolis to kick off the regular season. They are one of three teams, along with the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays, following this series, but they are the only ones with heavenly complications.

The Guardians now face a decision: Do they host their home opener that day, or that evening, or shortly after the three-minute, 49-second phase of totality in which day masquerades as night?

“Everyone talks about where they were when the Cavs won the championship,” said Chris Hartenstine, education coordinator at NASA's Glenn Research Center. “Anyone can say, 'I was in the arena,' 'I was at the watch party,' 'I watched with friends.' This is one of those moments. It's science, not necessarily sports. The nice thing about the Guardians is you can get a little bit of both. 'I was there on opening day when the solar eclipse happened.'”

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Preparing for April 8, 2024 began for many on August 21, 2017, the date of the last total solar eclipse visible from the US. That's when Cleveland restaurant owner Sam McNulty set a reminder in his phone's calendar for the first time. Now he's completing a rooftop bar at Market Garden Brewery, to cater to the out-of-towners who have reserved tables for April 8.

For some it started a little earlier.

“I've been thinking about 2024 since I was a kid,” says Mike Kentrianakis, who has witnessed fourteen total solar eclipses since 1979 from Indonesia, Chile, Gabon, Australia, China, Russia, Greece, Aruba, Canada and – while across the Scotia Sea – north of the Antarctic Peninsula.

He watched the 2017 solar eclipse from Carbondale, Illinois, and in late March he piles into a rental car in Queens, NY, and begins his 15-hour trek to the same spot, the rare city that falls in the fall. path of totality in both 2017 and 2024.

“I will do anything for an eclipse,” Kentrianakis said.

Hartenstine anchored NASA's public presentation of the path of totality seven years ago in a tent on the lawn in front of the State Capitol building in Jefferson City, Missouri. He didn't really know what to expect. Hartenstine went from sweating buckets in the 90-degree summer heat in Jefferson City to needing a sweatshirt. As darkness fell in the middle of the day, cicadas, cicadas and birds chirped in confusion. The shadows sharpened to what Hartenstine described as “video game” levels as the moon obstructed the sun's effect, before everything returned to normal with disappointing speed.

“Four minutes is a song on the radio,” Hartenstine said. “You can totally miss the experience. You have to know in advance to know what you are looking for and then you can really embrace it.”

While some embrace it, others have to plan around it. The eclipse coincides with the NCAA Women's Final Four at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and the Cleveland International Film Festival at Playhouse Square. And of course, the Guardians' home opener – who will, at least to some extent, have to surrender to the idiosyncrasies of science for a once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse in the park.

Over the past few months, the Guardians have consulted with everyone from local authorities to NASA scientists as they try to determine the best opening day approach. The Guardians have seven of their last eight home openers (with fans allowed) scheduled for 4:10 PM ET, but that time will fall in the partial eclipse window and attempt to run an 87-mph slider while taking a solar-powered Wearing energy filtered glasses is quite a task. If they choose a late afternoon start time, fans may be able to view the eclipse from seats on the ballpark that face the afternoon sun. Even if they opt for a night game, there will still be traffic-related challenges that they will have to solve.

Few baseball teams have had to consider such questions before, but there is at least one example — and they leaned hard on the eclipse festivities.

In 2017, the Bowling Green Hot Rods, the Low A affiliate of the Rays, faced a similar dilemma. Bowling Green, Kentucky, was in the path of totality, and when an astronomy professor at nearby Western Kentucky University put it on their radar a year in advance, the Hot Rods began their plans.

They opted for a first pitch at brunch time, officially 10:34 a.m., because competition rules prohibited them from starting much earlier. The teams, clad in black “moon” and white “sun” jerseys, flew through the first eight innings, but just as the Hot Rods' broadcaster expressed relief at the pace of play, the West Michigan Whitecaps set a ninth series of five runs together. and the sunlight began to dim.

If the match had lasted longer than the two hours and 38 minutes it needed, the teams would have paused the action. Instead, just after the final out, players and fans sprawled on the grass outside the field as professors explained the science unfolding above us.

The Hot Rods drew a crowd of 6,006, one of the largest in ballpark history, and certainly the largest for a first pitch on Monday morning.

The Guardians have sold out every home game since 1994, and it's reasonable to expect Progressive Field to sell out its roughly 35,000 seats again, eclipse or not. In a normal year, that might qualify as a major downtown event; this year there is a lot of competition.

This is the first total solar eclipse over Cleveland since 1809, nearly a century before the city's baseball team co-founded the American League. Destination Cleveland, an organization charged with bringing tourism to the city, estimates that 200,000 visitors will flock downtown that day. Most hotels in the city are already sold out.

“People will descend on Cleveland like we've never seen before,” said Scott Vollmer, Great Lakes Science Center's vice president of education and exhibits.

NASA will broadcast the day's events outside the Great Lakes Science Center, where 50,000 people are expected to gather for the grand finale of a three-day festival at the North Coast Harbor.

“It's literally a one-time thing,” Vollmer said, “and all you have to do is look up to see it.”

Downtown Cleveland isn't the only place expected to be overrun by eclipse tourists. The suburb of Avon Lake, Ohio, about half an hour west of downtown Cleveland, sits directly on the centerline of totality, hence the city's new slogan: “Totality's best seat.”

Erin Fach, director of parks and recreation at Avon Lake, studied Hopkinsville, a small town in southwestern Kentucky that welcomed visitors from 48 states for the 2017 solar eclipse. Fach and his team even dined at Ferrell's, a burger joint in Hopkinsville with one stove and a dozen bar stools, where five years after the historic event an eclipse burger was still on the menu: a double cheeseburger with bacon and sunny side up. egg.

Fach expects the city's population of 30,000 to double or triple by April 8. He has prepared the city's planners by describing the day as their annual Fourth of July fireworks show, coinciding with the largest high school football game they have ever hosted, as a new milestone unfolds. in the primary community park.

Now organizers and eclipse tourists alike are just hoping the weather holds and everyone can see the show. Cloud cover is a concern in Cleveland, but Hartenstine expressed cautious optimism that Lake Erie's temperature will create a barrier of cold air that pushes stagnant, overcast skies away from the water's edge. Colleagues at the Johnson Space Center in Houston asked Hartenstine why eclipse hunters would venture to Cleveland on April 8 instead of Dallas or another city with a more accommodating spring forecast. Hartenstine pointed out that Cleveland has had clear skies on that date for the past two years.

“The highlight (is) the totality,” Hartenstine said. “The last glimmer of sunlight disappears behind the moon and then you have to take off your eclipse glasses, otherwise you won't see anything. When you take off those glasses, you see the sun's corona radiating through the sky.

“That was the moment for me in 2017. I still didn't get it. But once you take off the glasses and see the show, it's going to be however long you are on that path of totality, whether it's 20 seconds, or 3 minutes, 50 seconds, like Cleveland has done. You have to absorb it.

“That's four minutes of visual phenomenon, amazement – ​​and then it's gone.”

The Guardians are expected to decide on their start time in the coming weeks. Whether they build the eclipse into the home opener or try to work around it, it will be a baseball experience with little precedent.

Kentrianakis plans to wait until 18 to 24 hours before the culmination of the event to determine whether he will stay in Carbondale or quickly head to Cleveland. The city with the clearer prediction will win. It is the last total solar eclipse visible in the contiguous US until August 2044.

“It's an indescribable experience,” he said. “It's unlike anything you can imagine.

“Everyone will say, 'That was the coolest thing I've ever seen.'”

(Top image: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletics; Photos: Bill Ingalls courtesy of NASA; Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)