BALTIMORE — The Yankees are fighting mad over the way the Orioles handled the weather this weekend.
General manager Brian Cashman said his team was left out of the rescheduling arrangements for one of the two games postponed yesterday, which is now scheduled to be played Sept. 8. But the Orioles insist they’ve done nothing wrong and maintain both Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association approved the Sept. 8 date.
The situation has become a he said-he said affair, one that had manager Joe Girardi livid on Friday night. Yankees player representative Curtis Granderson declared the team would dispute the rescheduling and would enlist the MLBPA in the fight.
But can the Yankees fight the rescheduling?
“I have no idea,” Cashman told The Post yesterday. “Major League Baseball and Baltimore never communicated with me. I wasn’t aware. When we found out, MLB told us our players approved it. Our players said they didn’t.
“MLB and the Orioles need to get together on communication issues.”
Orioles Director of Communications Greg Bader said he doesn’t understand the Yankees’ protest.
“It’s certainly news to us that the Yankees are objecting to this date, considering the Players Association, Major League Baseball and everyone else involved signed off on this scenario,” Bader told The Post yesterday. “We presented every possible scenario to them — from a back-to-back day-night doubleheaders on a Sunday and Monday. We presented using the off-day on [Sept. 8] or using the off-day on [Sept. 15]. Essentially left it open-ended. Those are the only possible scenarios we could do.”
Bader added “every scenario that was presented was met with resistance. It is inaccurate to suggest that in any way the Orioles were uncooperative in this situation.”
A person with knowledge of the situation said the Yankees hierarchy of Cashman, team president Randy Levine and owner Hal Steinbrenner learned at 5 p.m. Friday that the Orioles had decided to postpone both games of yesterday’s scheduled doubleheader because of the Hurricane Irene forecast. Granderson said he found out about it hours later when it was announced during Friday’s game at Camden Yards.
“We have not agreed to play Sept. 8,” Girardi said.
The person with knowledge of the situation said MLB and the MLBPA should have asked the Yankees about the decision. But both the person and Granderson admitted that fighting the rescheduling would not be easy. Michael Weiner, head of the union, declined to comment yesterday.
The Yankees also were upset the Orioles would not agree to play a doubleheader on Friday, with Girardi saying it was “silly” that a twin-bill could not have been agreed to for that night.
“We talked to baseball. We were proactive,” Cashman said. “It was pretty obvious. The circumstances didn’t change. Baltimore didn’t want to make an early call. It was available if we wanted to get ahead of it. We had an opportunity.”
Though Friday brought announced postponements and reschedulings this weekend from other MLB teams, no team played a doubleheader on Friday in advance of the storm. However, the Reds and Marlins played a twinbill in Miami on Wednesday to make up for the Thursday game, which would have been threatened by Irene. Also, the Yankees-Orioles series is different from others because the teams play a wraparound series that ends tomorrow.
One interesting revelation yesterday surrounded the idea of the Yankees and Orioles playing their makeup game after the season, if necessary. Granderson had said on Friday it was one of his preferences, but yesterday Bader said doing that was an option, but that the players rejected it.
The teams are scheduled to play a day-night doubleheader today, and Bader said the Orioles had been in touch with local government offices as well as Maryland’s emergency agency to ensure safety.
“We are taking every precaution necessary from securing the facility to mapping out alternate communication plans,” Bader said. “We are prepared. We are ready and monitoring the situation. . . . We’re not going to put fans in any situation we think would be harmful.”
Additional reporting
by George A. King III