Questioning last night’s rain delay

At 10:19, nearly 30 minutes before the umpires eventually halted play, my dad sent me the following e-mail: “They are making a farce of baseball and the World Series by playing this game now.” At that point, the field was soaked, puddles were forming and no one was really having any fun out there.

A half an hour later, the game was halted, and about forty minutes after that, Bud Selig officially suspended the game until later tonight or whenever this rain stops. In the ensuing press conference, Selig mentioned something that, to me, raised a few red flags. Joshua Robinson has the report on the Bats blog:

UPDATE, 11:24: Selig just explained that if the Phillies had been ahead when play was stopped, the game would have technically entered a “rain delay.” That means that we would have waited here until conditions were playable again. But Selig specified that it would not have been called a Phillies victory. “I wasn’t about to let that happen,” he said…

UPDATE, 11:32: He also reiterated that he did not want to have to call this game a Phillies victory if they had stopped with Philadelphia in front: “I have to use my judgment. This is not a way to end a World Series.”

If Selig was so dead set on suspending this call and not awarding the Phillies the World Championship based on a 4.5 inning game — a decision which I support — why couldn’t the umpires halt play a little sooner? At no point in between 10:00 p.m. and 10:41 p.m. when the game was stopped should baseball have been played. Had this not been a World Series, the tarp would have been rolled out well before it finally made its October debut.

I am loathe to subscribe to conspiracy theories involving FOX, Bud Selig or the Masons, but someone was putting pressure on someone else to get this game in. If Bud had the authority to suspend and not end an official game, he should have done so well before 10:41 p.m. Personally, I’m just going to take the easy route out and as Mike did, blame A-Rod. It’s always his fault anyway.