Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!
From here.
Selig really had no choice but to hope that the Rays would tie the game. The World Series has never ended on a rainout. If it ever did it would be disastrous for baseball and 2008 would inflict another taint on a game that has had enough.
Well, that and the fact that I hate the Phillies and I want every Philadelphia team to suffer ignominious losses until the end of time. But that’s neither here nor there.
I am actually glad Selig wouldn’t have canceled the game after 6 innings. 1) I don’t want a cheap win. 2) It makes the fact that they tied it up palatable.
I have to say. The TV announcers really need to get their ears cleaned. Selig said he would have extended the rain delay 24, 48 hours if they had to stop when the Phillies were ahead in order to make the game go 9. Yet, they kept saying the Rays tying it up is what made the difference.
Such torture! But. Of course. This is the way Philadelphia sports are. It’s never easy!
Let’s go Phils!
Would the game actually have been declared official if it were more than five innings long and one team had the lead? That seems incredible to me. I am surprised to read that this is the first time a World Series game was suspended. I figured this might have occured at least once or twice in the days before floodlights, but to actually just call a game official in a short championship series seems hard to stomach, particularly if it’s the game that gives one team the title.
TV announcers are (for the most part) too stupid to live. I doubt that cleaning their ears out would accomplish much of anything.
These particular nitwits have had a hard time concealing their desire for a Tampa win, although they have calmed down a bit.
But those are the rules. I would have hated it as well, but if Philly was up 2-1 in the 6th and the game was rained out, your damned right that’s a win. What do we have a rule book for if Selig can just change it when he likes?
Whatever happened to “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”?
The delay certainly adds an interesting twist to pitching decisions. Hamels and Kazmir are out of the game*, but pretty much anyone else on either staff can still pitch when play resumes.
*Technically I think only Kazmir cannot be reinserted, Hamels could but that would most likely put him on very short rest and I don’t think that they’d do it.
The rule book is less clear on what to do in a suspended game in the post season. I don’t believe Selig would have been breaking any rule by suspending the game. The game should have been called much earlier though, or perhaps not started at all. This is what happens when a sport becomes to beholden to a TV contract. They play in unplayable conditions in order to keep the network happy. The reason that their has never been a suspended game before is that they never would have played through these conditions. Another fine legacy of Selig.
It has nothing to do with Selig. People have been bitching about WS games played under intolerable conditions at least since 1979, when Baltimore and Pittsburgh played with temperatures in the 30’s under a driving rain. Bowie Kuhn sat through one game without an overcoat and everybody mocked him.
This, however, concerns me. It’s OK if MLB wants to establish a policy that all post-season games are played to a finish, but the policy has to be publicized in advance, so that players, fans, and management know what to expect.
Big-time professional sports shouldn’t be making up rules as they go along.
I think that this is really the heart of it - even if he is technically within the rules, it feels a lot like Selig is just twisting them to make things happen the way he wants.
I’m just worried that this is going to cause the Phillies to lose steam. Obviously, I would have preferred the weather be better last night and the Phils win normally. But winning a shortened game would have been better than this - it’s like Selig just cock-blocked the entire Philadelphia fan base.
Calling a game early in the Series might be acceptable. But ending the Series when one team still has 27 outs to play with is terrible. More than a thousand men have contested over 1500 games this season, all culminating in this moment. I skimmed the Rulebook, and it didn’t seem definitive either way. In that instance, Tim Welke has final authority.
As to Freddy’s worry, the article at MLB.com said that Selig informed both clubs before the game started that it will go the full nine.
But this discussion is moot anyway, as the Rays did tie it up, so the temporary suspension to resume at 2-2 is exactly what the rules demand.
–Cliffy
I agree. In the fourth inning I was thinking that this was a total joke of a game and that needed to be called.
Alert: Suspended game cancelled for tonight. Will try again Wednesday…
Just for the record: I hate Joe Buck with the white-hot heat of a thousand splendid suns, oh my lands. When he started talking about how the game was “now official” in the bottom of the fifth, my husband made me go outside for a cigarette so I didn’t blow up his nice new television. As if anyone would ever call a clinching World Series game before it was over. And as if Philadelphia fans would really want that, anyway. I am illogical and irrational in a lot of respects – not mustard-packet-throwing crazy, but pretty damn crazy nonetheless – but these guys earned the right to win the old-fashioned way. So, anyway: SHUT UP, JOE BUCK, you sawed-off little nerdwaffle.
There, I’m done. Thanks for listening. (Hate Fox Sports, sorry.)
Is that guy there for any reason other than the fact he’s a pretty-boy? Seriously, his picture should be in the dictionary next to “metrosexual”.
He’s there partly because his father was a very famous and very well loved broadcaster, one of the best ever who would be on the Mount Rushmore of broadcasters, and he and Joe worked together for a while and he got credit for that. Because of that and his squeaky clean image he’s a favorite of the old white guys who make all the decisions.
I think he’s an annoying pompous ass and if I ever have to hear him preach about how offended I should be about something a player does again I’m going to paste a picture of him on the bottom of my toilet bowl.
I think he’s fine.
–Cliffy
Well guess what, even if they “suspend” it instead of calling it, the point where it becomes an “official game” is still important. If they had halted play before five innings were over, it would have been a restart, not a suspended game.
If the Rays hadn’t tied the game in the top of the sixth, MLB would have faced three choices, any one of which would have been wildly controversial:
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Play on through increasingly impossible conditions, worse even then the previous horrible conditions in 1979 and 2005, with the infield a lake.
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Call a suspended game with the Phillies ahead, in explicit defiance of the MLB rule book.
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Award the Phillies a rain-shortened victory.
These choices emerged as a consequence of the game reaching the fifth inning. I’d say an announcer who didn’t point that out would be pretty damned remiss.
It’s almost as if they’re using a Magic Eight Ball to figure this stuff out:
** Reply Hazy, Try Again Later.**
What a disaster. This basically sums up my feelings on the matter:
It’s not like anybody’s watching this series on the west coast, anyway.
What’s the ticket situation when this game finally resumes? Do people with rain checks get back in to watch the rest?