It is 2:15 p.m. The temperature outside is 88 degrees, “feels like 90”. This is close to today’s expected high. It is alternately very sunny and quite overcast. It is very humid.

We have tickets for the 6 p.m Nats-Reds game. Our normal way of going would be to leave the house between 4:30 and 4:45, drive to the Tenley Metro Station, and take the train to the ballpark. We would get there between 5:30 and 5:45 and in the stadium by the time the game started.

Weatherbug (my phone’s weather app) tells me that there is a constant 30% chance of rain and thunderstorms between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. It then has the chance tapering off between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Weather.com says that the temperature now is 92 degrees, “feels like 98”. It has 40% chance of showers and thunderstorms between 3 and 6, 20% between 6 and 8, and again 40% starting at 9.

For those of you who don’t keep track of baseball and weather, here are some general rules (I am not looking at a rule book): (1) if it is raining gently and is expected to stop fairly soon, keep playing. Fans in stands get wet, or go inside where they can’t see the game; (2) if it raining harder and looks like it won’t stop immediately, postpone the game and put the tarp on the field. Once the tarp gets on the field, even if it stops raining almost immediately, you can anticipate a delay of at least 45 minutes or so – they need to decide the rain is really over, to remove the tarp, to rake out the infield and so forth; (3) if there are thunderstorms or a threat of thunderstorms, the stadium is cleared (i.e., all most go into the food courts) and the game is postponed immediately until all is clear on the radar.

If the teams are playing their last game of a series, or second to last, the umpires will postpone the game as long as it takes to be able to play it. A 6 p.m. game may start at 10 p.m., for example, unless it is clear that it will rain all night. Because the Nats and Reds are playing the first of a four game series tonight, it is more likely that rain would cause a cancellation, and the game would be played in the afternoon on Wednesday (so that there would be a day/night doubleheader that day).

If a game goes 5 innings before it is called, the game is official and over. If not, it would be continued at a later date (here again, probably Wed afternoon).

Our tickets would be good for a postponed game, but if the game is played fully, or at least through five innings tonight, and we didn’t attend, that would be it for our tickets. No rain checks if the game was played.

Under these circumstances, what does an 80 year old do? And is that different from what a 70, 60, 50, 40, 30 or 20 year old would do?

80 year olds generally don’t like to get wet. They don’t like to cower in closed sections of a stadium for hours and hours while they wait to see if there will be a game. They don’t like to attend a game that was scheduled to start at 6 p.m. if it isn’t going to be over until midnight. They don’t want to be in the stadium if the game is going to go past the Metro closing hour.

On the other hand, 80 year olds do like baseball games. They don’t like to think that they are a wuss. They don’t like making decisions when all the facts aren’t known. They don’t like to think that they are 80 years old. But they wonder if age is more than just a number.