Thanks for Four Years of Awesome
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Blogged Around Philly: Farewell Edition
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First of all, this is NOT the Curse of Billy Penn rearing its ugly head. There may have never been such a thing to begin with. The Phillies still enjoy a 3-1 lead in the World Series and will still be at home when the Series resumes play (supposedly) on Wednesday.
No, this was simply Commissioner Bud Selig making a mockery of America’s Pastime once again.
What happened Monday can only be described as a travesty of a sham of a mockery, or travashamockery, if you will. In the most important game of the year, Bud Selig threw his own sport under the bus.
Here’s what happened (as if you didn’t already know): The weather report was bad well in advance of the first pitch, Selig panicked about the prospect of pissing off the Fox Network, the game went on as scheduled, turned into a farcical wet joke to the point where players were in danger of getting injured and the integrity of the actual contest was compromised, and finally the game was suspended only when the Rays tied it as to alleviate all remnants of responsibility from Mr. Selig himself.
By allowing play to continue, Selig made a joke out of the most hallowed contest in his sport. Cole Hamels, by his own admission, did not throw a single curve ball on Monday night because of the weather. Furthermore, he also said that he couldn’t get a decent grip on his bread-and-butter pitch, the changeup. Couple that with Mother Nature swatting easy pop-ups away from Jimmy Rollins and how anyone can argue the game wasn't compromised long before it was called is beyond me.
The fact that this game is tied is a joke, and that it happened in the World Series is a tragedy.
So what could have been done? Many things. Anything except what was done.
For starters, how about pushing the game up to a five, six, or even seven o’clock start? When the forecast calls for the precipitation equivalent of what happened to Marsellus Wallace at the end of Pulp Fiction at right around 10:15, maybe it would have been a good idea to start the game early. No? Don’t like that idea, Bud? Oh, because Fox would shit a brick if their precious prime-time programming schedule was upended. It’s our fault for forgetting Rupert Murdoch now runs Major League Baseball. How about we simply push the game back a day or two? No? Too much of a logic-bomb to drop on your feeble head, you out-of-date curmudgeon?
And if you're insistent on making your players sludge through a World Series game on a river delta, how about suspending it when it becomes clear that the weather is having a greater effect on the outcome than the athletes themselves?
The game should have been called in the 4th or 5th inning, and that’s not a biased Philly-fan assessment. Trever Miller of the Tampa Bay Rays, ya know, THE TEAM TRYING TO BEAT THE PHILLIES, said, “I would have said no later than the fourth inning. As soon as Jimmy Rollins had trouble with that fly ball, right then and there that would have told everyone that conditions were not conducive to playing good baseball.” That’s right, a pitcher for the team that just got a huge boost from the Commissioner thinks that the game was a joke. AND he used the word “conducive” in a sentence. Extra points and a gold star for Trever Miller.
The point is, Selig wussed out because he was beholden to Fox Sports, and then he wussed out again because he was too scared to assert his authority, skirt the rules, and suspend the game with the home team in the lead. The rare Double-Wuss-Out. By waiting for it to become tied, Selig shirks all responsibility for what happened and, once again, looks out for himself. The only reason Selig isn’t the worst human being in sports is because people like Scott Boras exist, and the only reason he’s not the worst commissioner in sports is because Gary Bettman has the mind of a three-year-old (more teams! Bright colors! Shiny uniforms! Fighting is for mean people! Yaaaaay!!!!). Regardless, he is still a drain, detriment, and liability to Major League Baseball, its history and its fans.
So, what does this all mean? This means that Cole Hamels is done after 75 pitches. It means a game is tied that shouldn’t be tied. And it means the momentum shifts to the Rays. Basically, it all means that if the Phillies don’t win the World Series, Bud Selig will never be able to enter Philadelphia again without fear for his life. Selig proved once and for all that baseball is a business with a hard bottom-line and, at the end of the day, that bottom-line is all that matters. Money, advertising, broadcast rights. Our beloved game no longer exists. It’s just a homogenized, synthetic product to be sold off bit by bit to the highest bidder.
But that doesn’t mean that it still doesn’t mean something to us, the fans. And it does mean that this victory, if it comes, will be that much sweeter because of how bitter it will taste to Bud Selig, Joe Buck, and all the rest that didn’t get their precious Red Sox-Dodgers story-in-a-can World Series.
To those of us who carry the fire, it will mean that much more.
For further reading, see Jayson Stark and Phil Sheridan.
Image Credit: Flickr user SmileyReilly
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