By Allen Bacon
Editor, The Daily Bosco
It took over 48 hours to decide the outcome but the Philadelphia Phillies have finally won Game 5 of the World Series over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to win the Major League Baseball Championship.
For the first time in World Series history there was a rain delay. The game was called before the sixth inning was completed on Monday night because of poor field conditions after a steady downpour pelted the Philadelphis area. More rain kept the game from continuing on Tuesday. But Wednesday night it was a go and the Phillies took care of business.
It is the second championship for the Phillies who have been around for 126 years. It was their first since 1980.
Many have criticized Commissioner Bud Selig for allowing the game to start in the first place on Monday night and then that led to all kinds of finger pointing and rehashing of his record as possibly one of the worst Baseball Commissioners in history.
I have been extremely critical about Bud Selig's watch as commisioner of Baseball. He is no Kennesaw Mountain Landis or even Peter Uebberoth. But this time he is not at fault. He consulted with three meteoroligists before the game and they said this game could have been played. Do you really think that Bud Selig, after all the things that have happened to him in his term as the commisioner, like the All-star game fiasco or the way he handled the steroids issue, etc...was looking for another black eye. There's two things that are unpredictable...human nature and the weather.
As much of a debacle game five was because of the potential injury problems caused by horrible playing conditions...it is only the first time in the long history of the World Series that this has happened. Look it up. There were no rain delays until Monday night in the history of the World Series. Don't you know that this game is going to go down in baseball lore along with the Kurt Gibson homerun and the Babe pointing toward the fence at Wrigley or the Earthquake Series?
If you want to try the argument that the season is too long and we need to go back to the days when the World Series finished in the middle of October and there would be no weather issues...you're talking to the wrong guy. I absolutely love baseball. And I have devised a way to watch baseball all year round. That's why now I am listening and watching the Japan Series and Hawaii Winter Baseball league and then it will be the Carribean League and that will take me into the end of December. Then in January I watch Beer League games in the park. Then that takes me to the beginning of the College baseball season at the end of January and beginning of Februrary. I want to start a league that plays from October to the start of Spring Training and they would all play games in domed stadiums or stadiums with retractable roofs...but that's just me.
Which brings me to the point. The city of Philadelphia or the owners of Citizens Bank Ball Park in Philadelphia are to blame for this fiasco on Monday night. Do you know why? Because they were too cheap to put on a retractable roof on their stadium. All the great new ball parks have them. They should have one in Philadelphia because the weather can be brutal in April and it gets very hot and humid during the summer. They probably actually lose revenue by not having a retractable roof. The roof would have been in place for this game.
Do you want to hear something more absurd? The folks building the stadium in Minneapolis are not going to put a retractable roof there. Then when the Twins make the World Series this same thing will happen but it will be much colder.
At least Bud Selig's team, the Brewers, have a retractable roof on their stadium in Milwaukee.
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