Another Baseball Boner

You have to be pretty antiquated to remember "Merkle's Boner". After all, it was the talk of the baseball world 100 years ago. Fred Merkle was a young New York Giant whose failure to touch second base cost the Giants a game and helped the Cubs win the pennant.

That was then. This is now. Why, you ask, was Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins standing out there in the rain during Game 5 of the World Series? Good question.

Look, I have no quarrel with the fact that they started the game. The weather is a fickle thing, and everyone involved felt they could squeeze in Game 5.

But like the old Bob Dylan line says, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. All you had to do was open your eyes and look at the scene in Citizen's Bank Park. What a mess. You play football or rugby in weather like this. Not baseball.

The Lords of Baseball must have been too busy wining and dining corporate clients to notice what was going on down in the muck. Sure, they wanted to get the game in so they could preserve the sanctity of Fox's programming schedule, but long before B.J. Upton became the best mudder since Empire Maker in the 2003 Belmont Stakes, this game should have been halted.

Would it be impertinent to suggest that maybe, just maybe, playing games in the Northeast in late October is asking for trouble? That maybe, just maybe, baseball should think about shortening the endless season?

Perhaps. But at the least, baseball needs to make sure its showcase doesn't turn into a bad joke. And that scene in Philly was no laughing matter.