Suspended (Dis)Belief: Why Bud Selig Is Bad for Baseball

Once again, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is changing the rules on the fly.

Game Five of the World Series is currently suspended, tied at 2-2 in the middle of the sixth inning because of rain.

It never should have started.

The story that the league is spinning is that on Saturday, before Game Four on Saturday, Selig met with both the Phillies and Rays and agreed that the game had to go a minimum of nine innings.  After a 90-minute rain delay, the Phillies came out and won 10-2 to take a 3-1 lead in the series.

I agree that you don't want a Series game ending early, particularly if the teams end up sitting in the locker room for hours trying to wait out a delay, and then having the anti-climactic, "oh, well.  Guess you won.  Pop the champagne."

That being said, why did we not know this?

Why did Joe Buck say on the Fox broadcast Monday night after the top of the fifth inning, "this game's official"?

Why did the Rays players think they needed to score in the top of the sixth to extend their season with a lengthy rain delay looming as puddles began forming on the Citizens Bank Park infield?

Did they REALLY have that conversation on Saturday?

If the plan was always to finish nine innings, why not suspend the game after five?  It was already pretty wet. 

Better yet, why even start the game?

Yes, the forecast for Tuesday was bad.  Yes, CBP was engineered to handle light rain very well, and it held up pretty well until the precipitation got heavier. But league officials saw the radar. They knew there were no breaks in the rain. It could only get heavier.

Now, Mother Nature gets to do something the Rays could not: chase Cole Hamels from the game. The Phillies' ace is due to bat in the bottom of the sixth, and there is no way Hamels goes back out there once the game resumes. So the Phillies will also have to burn a pinch hitter, too.

The only good thing for Hamels is that he is still he pitcher of record, so should the Phillies be able to score a run in their first at-bat when the game resumes, Hamels could still pick up his fifth win of this postseason.

Had the league looked at the forecast and the radar, seeing that it was already raining and would rain for two days, they should have just postponed last night's action and let both teams go at it in superior conditions with their starting pitchers.

What if the rain got heavy in the second inning or third?  Would the game have been suspended?  Or would they start over?  Either way, both Hamels and Kasmir would have been wasted. 

Now, you have a three-and-a-half inning elimination game, most likely featuring both teams' bullpens.  A match-up, as a Phillies fan, that I'll take—but I would rather have had Hamels go as long as he could.

This is just another example of Emperor Selig changing the rules when he feels like it.

Remember the 2002 All-Star game?  It was Selig that decided the game should end in a tie, as both sides had used up their pitchers.  And it was that decision that led to the next controversial decision: that the league that won the All-Star Game would get home field in the Series.

There's a reason that this is the first-ever suspended World Series game: baseball's rules never allowed for suspended games before 2007.  Baseball games are "official" after five and a half innings, but I think we all agree we don't want playoff games ending early.  If the league didn't think it could get nine in, they should not have played.  Period.

But now, with Emperor Selig's decision, what we have is last night's Game Five ending as a tie (par for the course with Selig), and the two teams playing a shortened Game 5.5 tonight (or tomorrow), with the Phillies getting an extra at-bat.

And Fox gets an extra night of baseball.

It's never easy in Philadelphia.  Phillies fans have been waiting 28 years.  We can wait another night or two.  But the way Hamels has pitched this postseason, he deserved the chance to pitch a complete game.

That can't happen now. 

Selig saw to that.