Marcelo Mayer is only 21, but the Portland Sea Dogs shortstop has seen a lot on a baseball field. The blanket of heavy wet snow Mayer saw draped across Hadlock Field on Friday, yeah, that was a new one.

“Obviously we wanted to play today. We’re going the have to wait a little bit, but it was pretty cool to see the field covered in snow,” said Mayer, the fourth overall pick of the 2021 MLB draft.

The team announced Friday morning that the season opener at Hadlock on Friday evening would be postponed because of poor field conditions resulting from Thursday’s snowstorm.

The Sea Dogs were scheduled to open the season with a three-game series against the Hartford Yard Goats. The team announced that Saturday afternoon’s game has been postponed as well.

The Sea Dogs will evaluate the field conditions throughout the weekend and assess whether Sunday’s game, scheduled for 1 p.m., can be played. Manager Chad Epperson hoped it can be played, but wasn’t encouraged by Saturday’s forecast calling for rain showers and high temperatures only around 40 degrees.

“Sunday looks warmer, but that might be too late (to get the field ready),” Epperson said.

No makeup dates have been announced. Fans who have tickets to Friday or Saturday’s games may exchange their tickets for tickets of equal or lesser value to any 2024 Sea Dogs home game, subject to availability. Check with the team’s ticket office at 207-879-9500 or tickets@seadogs.com.

This is the fifth time in the Sea Dogs’ 31-year history that Opening Day has been postponed because of snow impacting field conditions (2001, 2003, 2007 and 2015). In 2017, the season opener was rained out.

On Friday, the team went to the Edge Academy indoor facility to work out, and planned to go back Saturday.

“It brought me back to college today, driving to a (batting) cage and getting my work in. That’s kind of the game here in the Northeast,” said catcher Mickey Gasper, who grew up in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and played his college ball at Bryant University in Rhode Island. “You’ve got to be ready for snow. You’ve got to be ready for any kind of inclement weather to throw a curveball at the schedule.

“It’s definitely a little disappointing. You’re a little sad. We’ve seen the Triple-A team (Worcester) play, and you’re going to see a lot of Double-A teams get going (Friday). We’re conditioned to play ball, plain and simple. We want to go compete and try to win some games.”

Like Gasper, catcher Kyle Teel grew up in the Northeast, in Mahwah, New Jersey. Dealing with snow is nothing new, Teel said.

“I remember going to Brick Township with my high school team early in the year, and it was always snowing or sleeting when we’d go down there. At the beginning of every season it was always like this,” said Teel, Boston’s first-round pick last year out of the University of Virginia. “Even in Virginia, in February you’d start and it’s freezing and snowing sometimes.”

Epperson said players were told to stay at their apartments Thursday during the storm.

“Some of them have never seen snow, much less driven in it,” Epperson said.

If Sunday’s game is postponed, it will push the Sea Dogs’ home opener to April 16 against the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Portland is scheduled to be on the road in Reading, Pennsylvania, next week. Whenever the Sea Dogs do get to play at Hadlock, they can expect games to be chilly. Playing in cold weather in the early part of the season is nothing unusual for the Sea Dogs. Last season, eight of Portland’s nine April home games began with a temperature under 50 degrees. Heaters in the dugout and bullpen can provide limited warmth.

“I think until you do it, there’s really no Kool-Aid for it. They find out, most of the time, when you’re moving around, you’re good. It’s the poor guys that are in the dugout that really feel it, or in the bullpen,” Epperson said. “With the adrenaline and everything going on, you really don’t think about it until you hit one off the end of the bat or the hands, then you really think about it.”

Nick Yorke spent all of last season with the Sea Dogs, and said he’s offered advice to new teammates on how to handle the cold early season weather. Yorke uses thicker bat grip tape, thicker batting gloves, and more pine tar to get a better grip on the bat with cold hands.

“I mean, I don’t have all the answers. It’s something you’ve got to get used to. You’ve got to figure out what works for you in the cold and find how you can still perform,” Yorke said.

Relief pitcher Christopher Troye grew up in California and said on cold days he slathers more Red Hot ointment on his arm. Troye recalled a few cold games in college at UNLV when he pitched for UC-Santa Barbara.

“It was maybe mid-February. That’s the high desert. It gets cold out there,” Troye said. “All your stretches, you’ve got to do them all at a higher intensity to just get the blood flowing.”

Starting pitcher Isaac Coffey, another California native, played college baseball at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, where Summit League road trips included cold games at North Dakota State and South Dakota State.

“I’m used to it, but lately, we’ve all been in Florida. We’re all coming from a very warm place,” Coffey said. “It’s going to take a few days to get used to, but I think it’s going to be OK. I think it’s better for the pitchers than the hitters.”

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