The road trip could not have come at a better time.

The Triple-A Nashville Sounds departed for an eight-game trip on Monday after the final two games of its homestand were washed out by the flooding that devastated so much of the team's hometown.

Greer Stadium survived the storms with little damage, and Sounds director of communications and operations Doug Scopel suggested that the field may have been playable on Monday if needed. But getting away was the best solution–crowds likely would have been sparse as the city cleaned up from storms that left at least 18 dead.

"When you have something this severe and tragic, weather wise, it will not only affect the baseball business, but any other business going on," Scopel said.

The Sounds weren't the only team impacted by the weekend storms. Their opponent, the Memphis Redbirds, endured a rough weekend in Nashville while its ballpark back home was flooded with rain.

The same storms that hit Nashville inundated AutoZone Park, leaving both dugouts filled with water up to the field level and roughly four feet of standing water in the ballpark tunnels. A drainage system beneath the outfield, which can pump four inches of rain an hour, got backed up and left standing water in the outfield.

"I had never seen that before here," Memphis director of operations and public relations Kyle Parkinson said.

Only sunny skies on Sunday afternoon and Monday dried out the field in time for Monday evening's game. Whether the team would be back from Nashville in time was not so certain.

First, the Redbirds got booted out of their team hotel on Sunday when folks in town for a Jimmy Buffett concert were unable to leave because of the storms. The team relocated to another hotel down the road and then found themselves stranded that evening when a charter bus from Memphis got turned back because of high water on I-40.

A bus finally arrived on Monday morning around 10:30, but the team quickly found out that returning to Memphis would be no simple journey. Flooded roads forced the Redbirds to travel north through Kentucky then cut back down through Missouri to Memphis. The normal three-and-a-half hour trip to closer to seven, with the Redbirds arriving at the ballpark at about 5 p.m. The team grabbed a quick bite to eat in the clubhouse before taking the field for a 7 p.m. start against Albuquerque.

Fittingly, Memphis won, 3-1.

"It was an intense couple of days just to get us three hours down the road," Parkinson said.