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Obama trumps suspended World Series game
by Allison Waldman, posted Oct 28th 2008 4:26PM
How long will baseball fans have to wait to watch the end of game five of the World Series between the Phillies and the Rays? Well, it'll be at least another day. Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has canceled tonight's resumption of the suspended game five. Oh, and you know that Barack Obama ad that is going to be shown from 8-8:30 on NBC and CBS (but not ABC)? It's also going to be on Fox, too. The World Series game will be pushed back to accommodate the Democratic Presidential candidate.
Don't flip out and cry foul! The TV gods anticipated that there might be a conflict when they sold the time slot to the Obama campaign. In fact, they had the opportunity to turn them down. But Fox was inclined to take the ad revenue.
When Fox made the deal for the time, the network agreed to delay the start time of the game to 8:35 p.m. should there be a game on October 29. They didn't know about the suspended game in advance, but there was a possible game on that night. MLB, which you figure might be upset, can't squawk.
Basically, baseball has allowed TV to dictate the way the postseason is presented. For years, World Series games were shown in the daytime -- under the sun -- and not on primetime TV. To make the most money for the games, which Fox pays a pretty penny to MLB to get the rights to broadcast, all World Series games are now under the lights.
Ironically, if yesterday's game had begun in the afternoon -- like 3 p.m. for instance -- it would have been completed before the rains came. If you were watching last night, you saw both teams struggle to play through a cold, nasty, unrelenting rainstorm. Finally, after Tampa Bay tied the game in the sixth inning, the game was suspended.
If the game had not been canceled today, the game would have began at 8:20 p.m. on Fox. The new plan -- tentatively -- is to resume game five on Wednesday night at 8:35, after the Obama show.
So now, the only problem for baseball fans is this: how do you wait when your stomach is in knots? Phillies' fans are on the brink of winning the series, just one more run over the next three innings -- and keeping the Rays from scoring -- and they'll be world champions.
By the way, baseball really never should have even started the game last night. The conditions were atrocious and instead of giving both teams a chance to play their best ball, they were slogging through mucky, muddy turf and fighting the elements. Bad weather makes football games fun. The same cannot be said of baseball.
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