The announcement came Tuesday morning because of forecasted cold temperatures and sub-freezing wind chills. Opening Day at PNC Field will now be Wednesday, April 8.
MOOSIC, Pa. — It feels like deja vu at PNC Field in Moosic. Opening Day for the RailRiders, originally scheduled for Tuesday, April 7, has been postponed to the next day because of subfreezing wind chills. It’s an all too familiar fate for RailRiders home openers, but that’s April here in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Last year, opening day was scheduled for April 8, but the frozen field wasn’t safe for players. The decision to postpone came about 30 minutes before the game was supposed to start, with management hoping the field would thaw in time. The next day, on Wednesday, April 9, the sun was out all day long, helping to melt the inch of ice underneath the dirt. So, opening day was a doubleheader at PNC Field.
In 2024, it was third time’s a charm for the RailRiders home opener. Almost an inch of rain fell on April 2, the originally scheduled date for opening day. Then the next day, even more rain fell. So the RailRiders started their season at home against Syracuse on April 4 that year.
In 2023, opening day was a historic one. Scheduled for March 31, it was the earliest season opener in franchise history and the first baseball game ever played here on Montage Mountain in the month of March. At the same time, just up the mountain, it was the 100th and final day of skiing and snowboarding for the season. But of course, baseball in March meant uncooperative weather. Rain delayed the game by about an hour for opening day that year.
In 2022, opening day was actually a really nice one; the highs that day were close to 70, and fans celebrated, showing up more than an hour early to take in all of opening day’s festivities.
In 2021, opening day wasn’t until the middle of May because of COVID, and in 2020, the season was cancelled all together.
Opening yay happened as scheduled in 2019 and 2018. But it looked and felt more like football weather than baseball. The wind was brisk, and there were even some flurries in 2018.
The warmest home opener in the past 10 years was in 2017. The high temperature was 82 degrees in Scranton on April 10; that broke a record for that day.
But the year before that, in 2016, about an inch and a half of rain fell on opening day. That delayed the start time of the game more than an hour. The rain did stop for a time, for about 4 innings. But the rain picked back up and became too heavy to keep playing, so the rest of the game wasn’t played until the next day, on April 8 that year.
Opening day this year is now scheduled for Wednesday, April 8, at 6:35 at PNC Field, and Friday will be a doubleheader. Baseball weather returns later this week, too, and it looks like it’s here to stay for a while.