Game 6 Postponed

Brace yourselves. I'm about to say something nice about baseball commissioner Bud "Bud" Selig.Those who know me will appreciate this is not unlike me nominating Harry Reid for the Nobel Prize in Political Science, but fair is fair. (And I have said nice things about Reid, as well. Not too damned often, but I have.)

Selig has presided over many things I don't like about baseball: interleague play; second-place teams in the post-season and the resulting additional tier of playoffs; widening disparity in team payrolls; the Steroid Era, during which he placed his head in the sand deep enough to strike oil until the public and political outcry became so great he had to don his Crusader robe and take credit for both the outbreak of offense and stopping it; ever-lengthening games; a tied All-Star game, then changing the rules to make it "count." For a relative purist such as myself, who understands baseball is a business, but, Jesus Christ, enough already, Selig has been a train wreck looking for a crossing with a school bus of disabled kids on it.

Tonight Buddy gets his due. Game 6 of the World Series has been postponed well in advance. This was true of another playoff game in an earlier round, as well, even though the weather report for that game was incorrect and things cleared up nicely in time for the game. It was still the right thing to do, and the decision was made easier by another decision Selig made a few years ago: all post-season games will be played to their conclusion. If a game must be halted due to bad weather, it will resume from the place where it left off. Regular season rules concerning shortened or suspended games do not apply.

This is as it should be. I'm old enough to remember a 1978 National League Championship Series game between the Phillies and the Dodgers played in rain so heavy it was hard to see the pitched ball from the center field camera. Those conditions not only endanger the players, they risk making a travesty of the most important games of the season.

Trying to sneak the game in despite the forecast would have been a horrible idea for a potentially series-ending game, killing much of the sense of drama a Game 6 entails. Call the game now, tell FOX to calm the fuck down and reschedule their ads for the X Factor, and do it right.

For one day at least, this Bud's for all baseball fans.