Baseball, it's been said, is a simple game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes it rains.

The latter wreaked havoc Tuesday night at Spring Mobile Ballpark, delaying the game between the Salt Lake Bees and Sacramento River Cats for one hour and 46 minutes.

When action resumed at 9 p.m., it took a while for things to heat up.

Less than half of the 3,564 fans in attendance waited out the storm and watched Salt Lake defeat Sacramento, 5-3.

Fewer than one hundred were on hand when the game ended just before midnight.

Back-to-back solo homers by Chris Pettit and Terry Evans in the bottom of the seventh inning proved to be the difference in the soggy series-opener.

The rain delay forced the Bees, who have now won four straight games, to replace starting pitcher Sean O'Sullivan. The right-hander threw seven pitches and retired one batter before the game was halted. He was relieved by Fernando Rodriguez when play resumed.

Rodriguez held the River Cats scoreless until the fourth when Jeff Baisley hit a two-run homer and Eric Patterson added an RBI double.

The Bees, however, erased the deficit an inning later. They sent seven batters to the plate and evened the score. Brad Coon, Pettit and Evans drove in runs to make it 3-3.

Former BYU star Matt Carson batted fifth for Sacramento and went 0-for-3. The outfielder, who taken in the fifth round of the 2002 draft by the New York Yankees, is in his first season with the Oakland Athletics organization.

The series continues tonight at 7:05. Salt Lake RHP Mike McDonald (3-5, 5.94 ERA) and Sacramento LHP Gio Gonzalez (1-1, 3.82 ERA) are the scheduled starters.

E-mail: dirk@desnews.com