A Storm for the Ages

Jason Budden: Un-Common Sense?

What was Major League Baseball thinking last night? It was raining cats and dogs in Philadelphia, yet the game raged on as if there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. There were visible puddles in the infield, but it took until the bottom of the sixth inning for the umpires to intervene.

Do you think the game would have been stopped earlier if the score was tied, and not 2-1 in favor of the Phillies? Bud Selig said after the game last night that he would not allow a team to win a World Series championship because of a rain-abbreviated game. This is much easier to say when the game was suspended in a 2-2 tie.

Selig and the MLB officials clearly did not want to deal with any controversy that would have come into play had the game been suspended in the bottom of the fifth with the Phillies leading 2-1. I don’t know if there was any video footage, but I would guess that Selig was giving out high fives to everyone in the MLB suite after Carlos Pena tied the score with a single in the top of the sixth.

I think that the situation could have been handled differently and the bigwigs within MLB should have had a “contingency” plan in effect at the start of last night’s game. But, in the end, MLB did make the right decision and have set up some great suspense heading into tonight’s re-start.

Hopefully they have analyzed all of tonight’s options and informed each team of the plans, whatever they might be. They avoided a PR nightmare last night, thanks to Pena, but if they aren’t truly prepared for tonight’s game, it may turn out that they just delayed the inevitable harsh criticism.

Only time will tell.


Jason Budden is the Vice President of Operations and Marketing at Baseball Factory. Jason joined the Baseball Factory in 1997 while still a junior in high school. After going through the Baseball Factory's college recruiting program he was placed at Johns Hopkins University where he played two years of college baseball before graduating with a degree in Economics. After working part-time at the Factory throughout college, Jason joined the team as a full-time employee in January 2002 when he was promoted to Director of Marketing. He currently oversees all marketing projects and sponsorship opportunities at Baseball Factory. He is also in charge of development and marketing for Baseball University, the leader in online baseball education and a division of Baseball Factory.