Girardi: Players put at risk during rain-soaked game

NEW YORK - By the time Adrian Beltre stepped to the plate with the bases loaded well past midnight, Yankee Stadium was nearly deserted. So could he hear his 9-year-old son cheering for him to get a hit?

''Clearly,'' Beltre said.

The Texas Rangers wrapped up a weird win at 2:44 a.m. Tuesday, rallying after a rain delay of more than 3 1/2 hours in the ninth inning to beat the New York Yankees 9-6 with maybe 100 fans left in the stands.

The ballpark was so empty that shouts from Texas players hollering in the dugout for Beltre's go-ahead, two-run single could easily be heard bouncing around the yard.

''The wait, it was worth it,'' Beltre said.

Rain-themed songs wafted over the sound system while showers fell during the break of 3 hours, 35 minutes. A half-dozen policemen without slickers or umbrellas got soaked while ringing the field, ensuring nobody tried to slide on the tarp - no one did.

''To me, the game should've been stopped earlier than that,'' Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. ''We played in horrible conditions, and I think you risk injuries to players. And we saw a bunch of their outfielders slip.

''It's hard for me to understand what happened tonight, how it got to this point. But it did and we lost.''

Texas manager Jeff Banister didn't want to quibble with how the umpires handled the weather.

''What matters is they allowed this game to be completed,'' he said.

''There's obviously agitation on both sides,'' he added.

Umpire crew chief Paul Nauert said ''our job is to try to get the game in. Just to cut it short for rain is not something that we're doing. We take that integrity part of it very seriously.''

''You've got to give both teams an equal, fair opportunity,'' he said. ''We were going to wait as long as we could.''

It was nowhere near the longest rain delay at this stadium. Two months after it opened in 2009, the start of a game against Washington was delayed 5 1/2 hours.