The first rule of show business is this: The show must go on.

Because each Major League Baseball team is required to put on 162 shows, teams must sometimes play in less-than-perfect conditions -- through snow, or brutal cold, or steady rain. The umpires work to get games in, and so do the players and groundskeepers, and this effort is at the core of all of the rules regarding rain delays and suspensions. Everyone understands that ballgames must be played.

But there are a few times in every season when that devotion overrides common sense, like on Monday night, when the New York Yankees played host to the Texas Rangers.

The rain was an issue throughout the evening, worsening in the seventh and eighth innings, before the game was stopped in the ninth inning, at the beginning of a Rangers rally against Aroldis Chapman. In the end, both teams waited through rain delays of almost four hours, and the final pitch was thrown at 2:44 a.m. Tuesday.

It's a good bet that all the primary parties involved -- the umpires, for sure, as well as the managers -- spent time musing afterward about how and why it all played out the way that it did and what could've been done differently.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi didn't hold back, saying he was unhappy with the handling of the game.