Suspenseful!

For starters, I didn’t get my free taco from Taco Bell this year …

In case you missed it, Jason Bartlett stole a base for the Rays in Game 1, and Taco Bell, therefore, filled its promise to give a free taco to anyone in America who asked for one between the hours of 2 and 6 p.m. yesterday …

My plan had been to leave work around 5 or 5:30 and claim my free taco during my drive home …

That didn’t happen. Instead, I got a late phone call from a source I’d been waiting to hear from all day. I had been minutes away from closing shop for the day and trying it again today. So when the source called, I had little choice but to work his comments into my story and submit it. I finished and left the office a few minutes after 6 …

For a little bit, I was bummed …

Then again, this was the second year Taco Bell had run the promotion. And I’ll bet they’ll do it again next year …

And if I had gotten my free taco this year, I’m not sure it would have topped the revelation and fun of last year’s free taco.

* * *

Now, about Monday’s Game 5 monsoon in Philadelphia …

I don’t blame Major League Baseball for starting the game. Supposedly Commissioner Bud Selig met with the involved parties before the game and, based on the forecast they had in their hands, they decided to go out and play. Fine.

But you’re asking for some serious problems when the conditions are so poor that the umpires aren’t calling the infield fly rule and the infield dirt is taking the shape of a shallow pond.

To complicate matters, it seemed as though everyone involved in the game or watching it was under the impression that the Phillies, leading the series three games to one and carrying a 2-1 lead heading into that infamous sixth inning, would be crowned World Series Champions when the game was called …

So, imagining the horror that would follow if the series did indeed end that way, I cheered immensely when BJ Upton reached base, somehow stole second base and then practically tip-toed around the rain-drenched third base to score on Carlos Pena’s single to tie the game 2-2 in the top of the sixth.

I breathed a sigh of relief and then yelled at the TV, “Now call this game!” Which the umpires promptly did.

It was only later in the post game news conference that Selig basically told reporters he was throwing out the rule book for the World Series; he basically said a World Series would not be shortened by rain under his watch …Which begs the question: Why did Monday’s night game last as long as it did?

Wrote SI's Joe Sheehan ...

Monday night's game had to be stopped. The weather deteriorated rapidly starting around 9:30 p.m., and the last two half-innings were played in conditions completely unfit for baseball. That they played those innings speaks poorly for both the umpiring crew and the commissioner; had the game not been a World Series game, with the attendant attention from network executives, there is no chance that the teams would have taken the field for the top of the sixth.

More good reads ...
a World Series Has Been Down Wet Paths in the Past
a Time Stops in a Delay, but the Strategies Don’t
a Umpires in Spotlight for the Wrong Reasons
a Phillies' Myers puts past behind him, on and off the field

* * *

Leading up to tonight’s game, my only hope was that the Phillies would win it tonight and put this quirky World Series out of its misery.

After all, it was comedian Andy Borowitz who wrote on Tuesday ...

In an unprecedented move, Major League Baseball cancelled the 2008 World Series today, citing "overwhelming lack of
interest."

This year's contest, featuring the Philadelphia Phillies and some other team, will be the first-ever World Series to be yanked before completion, but in the words of one baseball executive, "We're fairly sure no one will notice."

The decision to pull the plug on the Series came last night after the fifth game of the contest was rain-delayed and suspended with the score standing at something to something.
Some guys were on base and another guy was pitching when the rains came, but no one in the stadium showed a flicker of interest in the outcome.

But once it got underway tonight, admittedly, there was something fun about sitting down to watch an elimination game that had started two nights ago and was re-beginning in the bottom of the sixth inning with the home team having the edge and its championship-starved fans going crazy. I got an extra kick when the TV analysts pointed out, because the game was starting in the bottom of the sixth, the Phillies would have 12 outs to work with, while the Rays would have just nine …

So unprecedented; so intense.

Then, of course, Geoff Jenkins -- our proud former Brewer -- led off the game, er, the bottom of the sixth inning with a double off the center field wall and eventually scored to break the tie …

The Rays barely got going and it was over.

Phillies win.

World Series over.

Season over.