It’s so cold at the Pinstripe Bowl that the teams are switching out of their cleats to wear sneakers
It’s a real chilly one in the Bronx.
With a kickoff temperature in the 20s and a wind chill even colder than that, it’s not exactly a balmy evening in the Bronx for the Pinstripe Bowl. Both of these teams are used to playing in the cold, but they’re not used to playing on natural grass in these temperatures as both teams have home stadiums with artificial turf.
Yankee Stadium doesn’t have an artificial surface, and that’s a bit of an issue.
Apparently this game is being played on a sheet of black ice pic.twitter.com/X6YM1FR9hE
— Dr. Saturday (@YahooDrSaturday) December 27, 2017
The rock-hard surface has forced the teams to adapt to the elements. That means taking the cleats off to get some modicum of traction.
Wearing sneakers can at least gain some sort of traction back. Cleats are great for running in grass, but if you’ve ever worn them on any other surface, you know how hard it is to plant and change direction.
A lot of the BC players are wearing sneakers today. Field is so frozen that cleats don't get any grip #PinstripeBowl
— Patrick Toppin (@choppintoppin) December 27, 2017
I was in the band at KSU when we played. Field is stupidly hard/compacted, nothing could dig in. Top layer was slick as hell, too.
— Peter Yadrich (@xaxziminrax) December 27, 2017
You can tell it's made for much taller cuts than football-height, and was never intended for cleats to really dig in
A field not cut out for football players makes perfect sense. Baseball players don’t exactly do much cutting or make quick direction changes in the outfield.