There are a lot of people angry with Major League Baseball and Bud Selig today over the way they treated the horrible weather at Citizen's Bank last night in Philadelphia. While I'm not exactly pleased with the manner things went down, I'm not really all that upset about it either.
Does it really matter when Bud Selig called the game? Whether he'd have decided to suspend the game in the third inning, the fifth inning, or the seventh inning, we still would have ended up with a suspended game. Bud Selig cannot stop rain from falling. I can, but I was busy and I don't much like Selig, so I wanted to see him sweat a bit.
What bothers me more than anything else is that this is not the first time this has happened in recent World Series. It's the first time we've had a game suspended, but it's not the first time that bad weather has interfered with what is supposed to be the game's crown jewel.
Back in 2005 the White Sox and Astros had to play two games at U.S. Cellular Field in which a steady rain fell. Granted, it wasn't as bad as last night's downpour, but it didn't make for great baseball either. With each passing year, there are more playoff games played in bad weather, and it's not going to get any better.
The truth is, the weather in this country and around the globe is changing. Whether you want to blame it on global warming, Osama Bin Laden, or Bud Selig is your call, but the fact is we can do nothing to change it. What we can do is change the scheduling of the postseason, and I don't just mean get rid of the unnecessary days off in the first few rounds.
No, I'm talking about shortening the regular season.
All Major League Baseball really has to do is shorten the season from 162 games to 144, and most of this would be avoided. This way the playoffs could start in mid-September, and the World Series would be wrapping up in the first or second week of October. Now doing this wouldn't completely eliminate bad weather from playoff and World Series games, but it would help avoid a lot of it.
Besides, is 162 games really necessary? Don't you have just as good of an idea who the good teams are after 144 games than you do with the full 162?
The problem is that baseball will never let this happen. To take 18 games off the schedule is to take away 18 games worth of revenue from each team, and owners aren't going to let that happen. No, they think letting the game look foolish every October amongst it's hardcore and casual fans is better for business.
So instead Bud will probably just move the World Series to Miller Park every year.
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sure nobody wanted to win on a technicality, but you can't call the game in the middle of an inning. You want to call a fair game, then let the Phillies bat, and then call the game. It really just shows how much America wants the Rays to win. Especially the announcers for Fox, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver were more excited to see the Rays tie the game then any of the players. MLB needs to change this rule, and fast
I realize what youre saying but if 144 games was all thats needed, the sox and twins wouldnt have been tied last day of the season and we wouldnt have had all that excitement.
As a Mets fan I am obligated to celebrate any suggestion of removing those last pesky 18 games from the regular season.
Cutting 18 games isn't nearly enough. Make it closer to 50 or 60.
Meanwhile, not for nothing, but I'm sure I remember pundits INSISTING that we needed to cut 18 games off the BEGINNING of the season because winters have been extending the past few years, and wreaking havoc on the weather in early April. No one is going to be happy. Give it a rest. If the Series was comprised of Minnesota and Arizona, Selig looks like a champ for league parity. Quit complaining already. The opinions are useless and moot.
Forget rain, I sat in the snow at Game 3 in 1997 in Cleveland. Maybe baseball players should just man up and play in weather and stop being a bunch of little girls.