The show must go on

The business of baseball has to take a back seat sometime, but the Triple-A Iowa Cubs did something unprecedented on Saturday. They played a game in front of a paid crowd of 0.

It wasn't some crazy promotion of a relative of Bill Veeck, either. It was the very real drama of flooding in Des Moines, which was under a voluntary evacuation at the time.

"Unprecedented," Iowa left fielder Matt Murton told the Des Moines Register. "Even when I was 5 years old, my dad used to watch me and my brother play catch in the backyard."

"The only other time I can remember that a game was purposely played in front of an official crowd of zero was about three years ago in an Independent League," Pacific Coast League commissioner Branch Rickey told the Register. "They did it for the publicity. As far as it being done out of necessity, like in Des Moines - I can't recall that ever being done."

The team felt they had to play to keep the schedule intact. There's a lot of travel in the Pacific Coast League. But it was a costly venture to have a game with no revenue. The game wasn't even on the radio.

"I'm not doing this for grins and giggles," Iowa GM Sam Bernabe said. "We were expecting around 12,000 fans. It's costing us a lot of money, but we have to play."

Iowa won the game over Nashville 5-4, and swept a doubleheader in front of more than 7,000 on Sunday.