08:16 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Journal photo / Glenn Osmundson Knowing the event will be over in a flash, photographers flock to get a team picture yesterday of the International League All-Stars at McCoy Stadium.

PAWTUCKET -- For a betting man, it was almost an absolute, certain, dead-solid lock.

As soon as the Pawtucket Red Sox schedule was published, a guy could check in with his sports broker and place a wager that, on whatever day the PawSox were slated to play their annual exhibition with the Boston Red Sox at McCoy Stadium, it would rain.

It happened three years in a row, from 1979-1981, washing out guaranteed sellouts for the PawSox every time. It happened back-to-back years in 1986-87, and then in three years out of four -- in 1993, 1994, and 1996.

So it's disappointing, but hardly surprising that, after a month of mostly sunny skies and warm, pleasant nights, the week the PawSox are playing host to the Triple-A All-Star Game has been damp and drizzly.

"It was brutal," said PawSox president Mike Tamburro, shaking his head as he recalled the frustrating rainouts that plagued the club the nights of much-anticipated events such as the exhibition games with the Red Sox.

"For the longest time," he said with a wry smile, "I fought with the weathermen. Finally, I realized we couldn't control the weather, so we just had to make the most of it."

That's what the PawSox are doing this week, as rain Monday night forced a cancellation of a

performance by the Rhode Island Philharmonic at McCoy Stadium, and put a damper on last night's extensive array of activities downtown.

"Rain or shine, we want this to be as special as it can be for the players and fans," Tamburro said yesterday afternoon at McCoy.

Monday night's festivities were not as as special as had been hoped for, or expected.

A celebrity home-run derby dragged on far too long. The Philharmonic, which had been scheduled to play at 9:30, wasn't able to begin setting up until after 11, and finally had to cancel because of the weather, although the few fans remaining of what had been a sellout crowd hadn't been informed of that as late as 11:15.

It was a rare flub at an untimely moment by the usually textbook-perfect PawSox organization, a development as shocking as Michael Jordan blowing an uncontested dunk, Frank Sinatra singing off-key, or James Earl Jones -- whose reading of the classic poem "Casey At The Bat" Monday night was a crowd-pleaser -- forgetting his lines.

No one was more disappointed than PawSox owner Ben Mondor, who had been saying for months how he'd been trying for years to get the Philharmonic to perform at McCoy.

Had events proceeded as scheduled, rather than falling hours behind, the orchestra might have been able to perform before the rain began.

"With the array of celebrities we'd invited," Tamburro said yesterday, "we honestly felt 20 percent of them wouldn't show. Even after so many accepted, we didn't think so many of them would want to hit.

"Having invited them to participate in a Celebrity Home-Run Derby, how we could we tell them they couldn't bat? After they'd given up their time to help make our celebration possible, we couldn't say: 'Sorry, guys.' "

The participants enjoyed themselves, but crowd interest waned considerably as the time for the Philharmonic concert came and went, and the prospect of the culminating fireworks display was pushed later and later into the night.

"It was a long evening, no doubt about it," Tamburro said.

There were highlights -- all-time Red Sox greats Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr embracing at home plate, Jones' dramatic reading, Pawtucket's All-Stars walking in from center field to hearty cheers.

"But did all of it go off the way we'd hoped? Absolutely not," Tamburro said.

One of the great things about the long baseball season is that there's always another game. Have a bad day -- go 0-for-5; strike out with the bases loaded, or the winning run on third; give up the homer that costs your team the game -- and you can immediately make up for it.

That's what the PawSox are determined to do.

"In this business," Tamburro said, "you learn new lessons every day."

He learned long ago that he can't do anything about the weather.

While it's hard to find anyone who doesn't like the PawSox, widely recognized as one of the best organizations in all of professional sports, it's apparent that Mother Nature isn't a big fan.

The Triple-A All-Star Game is as big an event as the PawSox ever had held, and they're not about to allow anything to rain on their parade.

As Tamburro enthusiastically said: "Bring on the ball game!"