DENVER (AP) — Elias Diaz of the Colorado Rockies stretched and dove, head first, making quite a splash.

The Rockies catcher wasn't stealing a base or avoiding a tag. Instead, Diaz was sliding on the hail-covered tarp of Coors Field hours before Colorado hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday night.

The Denver area was hit with heavy rain, high winds and pea-sized hail, transforming the green outfield grass into ice-covered turf and giving the “Boys of Summer” a taste of winter.

The conditions prompted Diaz to do a swan dive and left maintenance crews at Coors Field working to restore order to the field before Thursday night's game.

Walkways were covered with the icy mix and crews were left bailing buckets of the frozen and fast-melting slop from the entry to doors to the clubhouse in the home dugout. Across the way underneath the stadium near the visitors' clubhouse, others worked to push the water-hail mixture into drains.

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports