The game should not have been played. And there’s more info than I knew on Saturday.

Let me stipulate one thing right off the top of this article, so that there’s no mistake. The three-hour, 20-minute rain delay before Saturday’s Cubs/Reds game began was absolutely not the Cubs’ fault. This is all on Major League Baseball and Fox-TV, and that’s largely because the interests of the paying customer, gameday staff and players are not being considered. At all.

Now let’s look at the facts. It rained in Chicago from about 10 a.m. Saturday until well after 10 p.m. — in fact, it rained during most of the first five innings of the game, moderately at times. This forecast was well known at least two days ahead of time. There was no “window” to play a baseball game during this 12-hour span. The longest it stopped raining at any time during that period was maybe an hour. That’s it. That’s about when the grounds crew at Wrigley Field began preparations for the game — and by the time that hour “window” closed, it was raining again.

This game should have been postponed at noon Saturday, or perhaps even earlier. Then no fans would have had to come to the ballpark, no gameday staff would have had to arrive and be paid (staff gets paid a minimum of five hours even if the game is rained out), players could have stayed at home or in the case of the Reds, at their hotel. Reds players could have had a nice dinner instead of playing until after midnight. Both teams’ players likely got to bed after 2 a.m., then had to be ready to play an afternoon game only hours later. In the case of gameday staff, many of them travel long distances by car to Wrigley Field (or use public transit, which often runs on a reduced schedule late at night) — and then had to be back early Sunday morning.

Here are a couple of things I learned on Sunday that I didn’t know when Saturday’s game was delayed, then started at the ridiculous hour of 9:35 p.m. CT.

First, MLB did consider postponing the game — but only if there could be a split doubleheader played Sunday to make it up. That’s apparently because there is a mindset in the MLB offices that “if a game is postponed it MUST be made up at the next possible opportunity.” This is just ignorant thinking. First of all, that would have forced the Cubs to scramble to find gameday staff to work on a Sunday night (since that would have been the makeup game), as well as get league permission to televise the game against ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast, which is supposed to be an exclusive.