When it rains...it pours...

I am a baseball fan through and through. I attend a lot of sporting events and I enjoy them, but there's nothing I love more than a live baseball game . I'll defend the strategy, the precision and the beauty of the sport to the end of the universe. Last night though, as a baseball fan, I was disgusted by what happened on the field in Philadelphia during Game 5 of the World Series.

Around the fourth inning, the rain started to fall on Citizens Bank Park. With the Phillies leading 2-1, I immediately thought to myself, "This game could end in a rain delay if they let the Rays bat in the top of the fifth and the Phillies could win the World Series in a 4 1/2 inning game." Of all of the embarrassing things that Bud Selig has done in his time as commissioner of Major League Baseball, ending the World Series in a shortened game would've been the trump card.

Of course, Selig now claims that if it came down to it, he could've acted to call an extended "rain delay" and resumed the game on Tuesday night, no matter what the score of the game or what the actual rulebook says. That would obviously be the right thing to do in a 2-1 game after five innings given the situation, so why, exactly, did these two teams play through a freezing downpour for an inning and a half, only to have the game almost immediately suspended at the first point that the rulebook allowed for it. Sure, the Rays tied the game. But they only did it after B.J. Upton reached when Jimmy Rollins flubbed a very fieldable grounder, then ran around the basepaths to score the tying run while the Phillies attempted to throw him out with an incredibly slippery baseball. If Selig and the baseball officials had the power to suspend the game until tomorrow, even though the rules don't technically allow for it, and they were meaning to do it, why hadn't it been done at that point? With all due respect to the Rays, the tying run in this game was scored by the weather, not them. What happened last night also solidifies my point that baseball should begin in May (to avoid the debacle with the "snow days" like we had in Cleveland) and conclude at the end of September to avoid 30 degree baseball games.

Maybe Selig thought he had the power to go around the rules and suspend a game that wasn't tied. But the fact is he didn't, and he allowed the most important game of the season, to this point, to press on in conditions that were unfit for baseball. This is the exact kind of gutlessness that has ruined Selig's term as commissioner, be it turning a blind eye to steroids or allowing the All-Star Game to end in a tie. The man is simply unable to make a difficult decision. He can say what he likes about what he would or wouldn't have done had the Rays not tied the game up, but it certainly seemed to me that the Rays scoring provided an easy out for him and prevented the debacle that he allowed to to take place in the first place from going on any longer.

Yes, it’s inconvenient to reschedule games, which would be necessary if the Series were delayed until Wednesday. But you have to have some respect for the game that you keep telling us is the greatest game ever invented. You have to be willing to be inconvenienced if that’s the price of deciding your championship under conditions that are fair to the players, the game and the fans.

Oh yeah...Go Rays!