An issue between a firefighter and a baseball team resulted in the baseball field being flooded allegeldy on purpose.

The Takoma Thunderbolts were taking batting practice on July 17 when a fly ball flew over the fence and hit a personal vehicle of a firefighter working at the Silver Spring Fire Station nearby, WRC reported.

A short time later, the team saw a fire engine leave the station and just about when the Thunderbolts were going to start their game, water started flooding the field.

Outfielder Aidan Driscoll told WJLA, “One of our players heard someone from the firehouse say, ‘Hey, watch out. We don’t want you to get wet.’ And he said, ‘I’m going to shoot the water onto the field.’ Probably two minutes later, all we saw was [a massive stream of water] basically just shooting directly onto center field.”

A video of the water spraying onto the field was shared on social media.

WRC reported a player ran to the station to get the water turned off, but was met with what the news station described as “angry words.”

“I see some players rushing off the field because water is being shot onto our outfield, which, then we spend a lot of time fixing the field up as it’s been raining every single day,” player Max Eckert said. “And so I ran out there thinking it was a mistake and just saying ‘Hey! Hey! You probably want to turn that off or redirect it,’ and then things got a little heated from that point on.”

The team posted to Facebook that the game had “been washed out, so to speak, due to centerfield being flooded after a pickup truck parked on fire station grounds behind the left field fence was apparently hit by a batting practice home run. After that incident, water started spraying from the station onto centerfield. The field was left unplayable and the game canceled. An investigation will determine exactly what caused the water to be sprayed onto the field.”

Player Brock Hunter said that some families from the opposing team drove an hour and a half in traffic just to have the game canceled.

Thunderbolts founder, Dick O’Connor said that the fire department employees had been told not to park where the truck was.

As for the fire-truck rainout...

“I went [to the fire station] and talked to the captain, and he admitted that he did it,” O’Connor told WJLA. “And he said he wanted to get our attention.”

The firefighter is on leave and the Montgomery County Fire Department issued an apology.

“We want to express our sincere apologies to the players, teams, Cal Ripken League and all fans and families impacted by this disruption,” the department wrote in a statement. “We understand how important this venue is to the community, and especially to the young athletes who look forward to these events.”

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