"You Gotta Be Kidding!"
by Mickey Charles, CEO Sports Network

It wasn't pretty. As a matter of fact, it was downright ugly. The term "Fall Classic" turned into the greatest misnomer in grammatical and definitive history. Manipulative managerial magic was nowhere to be seen, unless you included putting an umbrella into every cubicle on the bat rack. There were no dynamic double plays, scintillating steals of second base, and yearning for the safety and warmth of Tropicana Field was the order of the night.

Commissioner Bud Selig

Doesn't Major League Baseball know why we have weather reports? When there is a tsunami in the forecast you do not plan to go fishing or surfing, much less swimming. Bud Selig, MLB Commissioner and never an applicant or nominee for a Pulitzer Prize for literary achievement, was heard to say, "I have to use my judgment" when Game 5 of the World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays was finally brought to a welcome, compassionate, and appreciative halt. Nothing gets past the Commish!!! Duh!!!

The game never should have been begun. It was idiocy. Mental incompetence, monetarily motivated, driven by people devoid of common sense. That was not construction work going on in the parking lot, and the man with the long flowing white beard, holding a staff, wearing a white robe and motioning to the animals was building an ark! When you see cars being parked and drivers placing pontoons under their wheels, there is a message being sent. Folks rowing up to the entry gates and disembarking wearing life vests and carrying buoys are trying to warn of impending flood conditions.

Running around the bases wearing flippers and hydroplaning seems to indicate that the rain is coming down a bit hard. Chasing down a ground ball and leaping over puddles in the infield to avoid drowning indicates, clearly, that something is wrong with this picture. When was the last time you saw everyone, at bat and in the field, wearing earmuffs and gloves? Probably the last time you visited Alaska to attend the Iditarod, over 1,150 miles long, the last great race on Earth, equal to what might be the worst game in World Series history.

How much coffee, beer, or other liquids could Selig and his staff absorb to make them totally oblivious to the fiasco that Mother Nature had opted to send along?

It was ugly. It was a game that never should have been begun.

The prayers of the hierarchy of the sport were answered when the Rays tied the game in the top of the sixth. B.J. Upton needed water skis to get to second and position himself to be in place with the tying run. Any more speed heading down there, and he might have slid all the way into the field boxes along the third base line. Meanwhile, weather aside (but how can one really say that?), Scott Kazmir had to contend with plate umpire Jeff Kellogg, who decided to make Kazmir's particular strike zone sort of like threading a needle that was being held but also moved from side to side. A near impossible task, a huge disadvantage and one of the maladroit misgivings of the umpires that are blindly discounted as "part of the game" by MLB. These guys are not bad, they are awful!!!

Weather, ineptitude behind the plate and on the field for most of the Series and then Bob Dupuy, baseball's president and CEO, has the effrontery to come out and say that he would have suspended the game even if Tampa Bay had not scored and tied it up. Sure!!! We will never really know, and can only conjecture but that occurrence was a prayer answered for him, Selig and others that might have contributed to the decision.

Snow was falling in the Philadelphia area the day after Game 5 of the World Series was suspended.

Upton, Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria awoke just in time to make this interesting, although Upton had been doing all he could in each game to help his team, while Pena and Longoria decided that an early exit was their fate. Something changed their minds and now we have a continuance slated for this evening while the snows fall in Philadelphia. My guess is that Selig probably thinks it is confetti misplaced for an early celebration in Philadelphia.

To cap things off, the Rays checked out of their hotel yesterday and had no place to sleep until someone on staff found accommodations in Delaware. Nice move, but it goes with the script to date.

Baseball blew it!!! They blew it big time. This Series is as far from a Classic as Earth is from the Sun. It will be remembered as the AquaGame or, given what is likely, the Snow Series.

Wet and downright dangerous, windy and blowing pop-ups and fly balls all over the place, cold enough so that the clubhouse staff had to put small blankets on all of the champagne bottles because they were shaking and shivering, and there is a bottom of the sixth scheduled with two more games to go if the Rays rise.