Selig: No shortened
PHILADELPHIA — Bud Selig's weather forecasters kept telling him he'd get the game in, and the baseball commissioner was determined: No shortened World Series games on his watch.
So he met in the umpires' room with officials of both teams an hour before the start of Game 5 Monday night and told them no matter how long it took, the game would not be cut short.
"I was not going to allow that to happen," the 74-year-old commissioner said, clutching a rule book in his left hand.
When the Phillies and Rays were suspended with the score 2-2 after 5½ innings, Selig explained that the game would be played to completion. If one team had been ahead, there might have been the longest rain delay in history.
"I have to use my judgment," he said. "The game would have been in a rain delay until weather conditions allowed us to continue. And that might have been 24 hours or 48 hours or who knows?"
While regular-season games can end after the trailing team has made 15 outs, there has never been a shortened postseason game. Selig did not want a situation where the Phillies, who lead the Series three games to one, could have been ahead, and then won the World Series when the game was called several hours later without completing it.
"It's not a way to end a World Series," he said. "I'm on very solid ground."
Selig and a gaggle of officials met before the game to go over what would happen. The meeting included Phillies general manager Pat Gillick, Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman, the managers of both teams, MLB chief operating officer Bob DuPuy and other top officials from the commissioner's office.
"Both Andrew and myself, we wanted to make sure that if this game was to be played, we wanted it to play to the conclusion," Gillick said. "I wanted it played fairly, both sides, Tampa Bay and ourselves. We were aware that the commissioner could, even with the score not tied, could continue this game later and call a rain delay until the proper conditions did exist."
Tampa Bay agreed with the decision.
"There was significant discussion before the game and before Saturday's game about the conditions," Rays president Matt Silverman said, referring to Game 3 whose start was delayed 91 minutes. "The decision was made ... the game wouldn't end without playing the full nine innings."
