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MLB has decided to postpone Wednesday’s scheduled game between the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees, as smoke from the hundreds of wildfires burning in Canada continues to wreak havoc with air quality throughout the northeastern United States.
Tonight’s Yankees-White Sox game (Wednesday, June 7) is rescheduled because of poor air quality due to smoke from the Canadian wildfires and will be made up tomorrow, Thursday, June 8, as the first game of a single-admission doubleheader, which will begin at 4:05pm. pic.twitter.com/nx1WxqUaTU
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) June 7, 2023
The game will instead be played on Thursday afternoon as the first game of a doubleheader.
Chicago and New York played the opener of their three-game set on Tuesday night amid a palpable haze, as storm winds and some 400 active wildfires throughout Canada conspired to send clouds of smoke everywhere from Detroit to Philadelphia to New York to Washington, D.C. Conditions worsened on Wednesday, with the sky above New York City turning an apocalyptic orange:
And scene inside Yankee Stadium… pic.twitter.com/ocPBsPk0ZB
— Erik Boland (@eboland11) June 7, 2023
The air quality index (AQI) in the Bronx, home to Yankee Stadium, got up above 300 — a range which the Environmental Protection Agency deems “hazardous”. (According to CBS News, New York City was second only to Delhi, India for the worst air quality and pollution out of 100 tracked countries as of Wednesday morning.) The U.S. National Weather Service issued an air quality alert for New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens, Richmond, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Putnam counties, in effect until midnight on Wednesday. Mayor Eric Adams, meanwhile, urged New Yorkers to “limit outdoor activity to the greatest extent possible” while cancelling school for the day.
Chicago’s Lance Lynn and New York’s Randy Vasquez were the scheduled starters for Wednesday’s game and will presumably get the ball for the day game on Thursday. MLB also postponed the Philadelphia Phillies’ home game against the Detroit Tigers, to be made up on Thursday night.