Why Bud Selig Is Bad For Baseball -- Part #586,378

Yes, I stayed up to watch the game last night. All of it. Almost every single solitary minute. We missed a grand total of maybe 15 pitches on the night due to snack breaks, laundry room adventures, and TiVo conflicts.

Yes, I think that the right decision was made, suspending the game instead of calling it due to bad weather. Anybody who honestly believes that a clinching game of a World Series would ever, under any circumstances, be called early due to anything short of the Apocalypse is a nutbar of the highest order.

Yes, I want the Phillies to win, but I also want them to do it fair and square, the old-fashioned way: by playing 36 innings of winning baseball. Maybe there will be inclement weather sometimes. Maybe there will be plagues of flies. Maybe we have to rely on our bullpen and our bats to finish a game once in a while. So what?

But that doesn't mean that shit like this doesn't still annoy the piss out of me:

[W]hat, apparently, none of these players on either team knew -- was that Selig had already made his big decision.

If the rules weren't going to permit him to suspend this game, he was going to have to go to Plan B. He was just going to have to impose martial law -- or at least Selig's Law -- and, essentially, suspend it anyway. By simply declaring the world's longest rain delay. Whether that took 24 hours, 48 hours or all the way to Thanksgiving.

Selig vowed these teams were not going to finish this game "until we have decent weather conditions."

Gee, it's a shame he didn't have that same feeling before he allowed this game to start in the first place. (emphasis added)

Yes, we know people who were at the game last night. They reported that the weather wasn't too bad even up until 9:30 or so. Some drizzly mist, cold swirling winds, temperatures dropping, but nothing that we haven't seen before. Nothing unexpected for this part of the country at this time of year. Nothing that the Eagles haven't played in before.

Yes, conditions got ugly, and maybe even a little scary. Routine infield popups were difficult to field. Puddles were forming around home plate. The rubber on the pitcher's mound was sinking like it was on quicksand. Bases were getting stolen that never should have been, never would have been under normal circumstances.

Or, in other words, if the Phillies wanted to win this game, if they still want to win this game, they're going to have to earn it, which is what they really want, anyway: "'We've been playing for seven months," [second-baseman Chase] Utley said. "Another day or two is not going to hurt us.'"

Yes, I still believe. I'm a Philly girl. What else is there for me to do?