Baseball needs to put freeze on November Fall Classics
PHILADELPHIA -- Having emerged on the other side of a Philadelphia Phillies World Series title, stepped around the overturned car, avoided the fires and looting and lived to tell about it, all I know is this:
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| At least it didn't snow on Carlos Ruiz and the Phillies, but wait 'til next year. (US Presswire) |
Next year's World Series has, without question, got to be stopped.
It simply cannot be played. At least, not into November, it can't.
Or shouldn't.
It is utterly preposterous, and anyone who either shivered through the rain and cold during Games 4 and 5 here or watched what devolved into a mud-wrestling contest in Game 4 knows this.
A team plays a full 162-game schedule, busts its collective butt for six months, nurse-maids its fragile pitchers, chews through hundreds of packs of sunflower seeds ... and then reaches what is supposed to be the sport's pinnacle, only to wind up playing a bastardized version of something Abner Doubleday never would have created? While wearing hoodies and ear muffs?
This is not a defense of the Tampa Bay Rays, who lost because they were outplayed.
This is not an apology for the Phillies, who didn't exactly hide the fact that Citizens Bank Park actually does not have a roof when the baseball world moved in last Friday.
This is just to reiterate that playing baseball this late into October might be reaching the point where it's not worth the trade-off for an extra round of playoffs, which most people (with the help of commissioner Bud Selig's constant reminders) now take as gospel was a brilliant idea.
Let's be clear here: The wild-card round is a good idea. Great idea. In theory.
But there are diminishing returns if it contributes toward pushing the World Series, what formerly was one of sports' best events, off the cliff.
We're emerging from a fifth consecutive crappy World Series -- none of which has lasted longer than five games -- and the weather has directly affected at least three in a row.
