I was one of 175 people credited with watching the second half of Penn's doubleheader win on Saturday against Columbia.
The lackluster crowd (112 for Game 1) probably had a great deal to do with the miserable weather and the idea of watching a scheduled 16 innings.
And the crowd didn't even get to see how the second game ended.
The last inning of Game 2 was moved to Columbia on Sunday morning after Meiklejohn Stadium became too dark to play in, setting up another six-hour day of baseball in New York.
The reason for this whole mess is the Ivy League baseball schedule, which has been the same for as long as Quakers coach John Cole can remember.
Cole was an assistant at Dartmouth in 1991 and 1992, when Army and Navy played with the Ancient Eight in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League.
The teams play two doubleheaders a weekend, on Saturday and Sunday.
Since 1993, when Army and Navy left for the Patriot League, the Ivies have been divided into two divisions. Each team plays four games against each of the other teams in its division and two against each of the teams in the other division.
That's a total of 20 games in five weekends.
Changing this system would be beneficial for both the players and the fans.
Of the 30 Division I conferences, only the Ivy League, the six-team Horizon League, the seven-team Mideast Athletic Conference and the six-team Patriot League play so few games to decide the conference winner.
And only three other conferences -- the Mid-American Conference, the Southeastern Conference and the West Coast Conference -- have divisions. The MAC and the SEC have 12 teams each, and the eight-team WCC plays a 30-game conference season.
The Ivy League also has a travel rule for games, permitting only 20 players to go on a one-night road trip and 22 to go for a weekend.
And thus, as Cole says, teams are "very limited pitching-wise."
This is why junior reliever Doug Brown, who has been the star of the staff, was forced to pitch 4 2/3 innings combined in the first three games, picking up the decision in each one.
Overall, Cole used eight of the nine pitchers on his roster in the four games.
He called the travel rules "ridiculous."
The reason for the squashed schedule is that the Ivy League does not seem to want to play during finals -- although the Ivy League championship series and NCAA Tournament are during or after finals.
Aside from being a strain from a coaching perspective, a season played entirely in the Northeast during March and early April is not conducive to nice baseball weather.
"The extended season is much needed," Cole said.
He added that a season into late April and May like practically every other conference will make the players happier and bring more fans.
"It's the weather that's going to keep people away," Cole said.
Cole believes that the Ivies are also reluctant to extend the season because of the cost of extra road trips and of keeping students at school after the dorms are closed.
I could not get in touch with the appropriate person in the Ivy League office yesterday to find out exactly why that is.
Cole believes that to change it would involve a process similar to that in discussions of a football postseason.
Coaches and athletes would have to recommend it and make a proposal, and the Ivy presidents would have to adopt it.
It doesn't look like the football landscape will change any time soon, so maybe the presidents can at least make a relevant change elsewhere in the athletic world.
Baseball teams should play a three-game series Friday, Saturday and Sunday like nearly every other conference.
Keep the divisions or leave them, it does not matter.
But make the season longer so that baseball can be played when it was meant to be played: under sunny, warm skies.
If every other school can come up with a way to raise the money, the eight Ivy League schools can do so as well.
Then maybe more than 200 people will show up to a game.
Josh Hirsch is a junior urban studies major from Roslyn, N.Y., and former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is jjhirsch@sas.upenn.edu.
