Remember how it was raining and raining and raining during Game 5 of the World Series and the game clearly should have been delayed/called because of it, but the game kept marching onward because if it didn’t the Phillies would have been World Series champions based on a rainout, but then Bud Selig just waited until the Rays (thankfully) scored and then threw the game into a rain delay and it was eventually called for rain? Me too.

Well, this sort of thing ain’t ever gonna happen again:

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced the sport will enact a rules change stating that postseason games cannot be shortened because of bad weather.

“All postseason games, All-Star games and that, will be full-length affairs, and the rule will be so written,” Selig said Thursday following an owners’ meeting.

Selig said the change also will apply to tiebreaker games that decide division titles and wild-card berths.

“Any game that has significance for the postseason,” he said. “It will be very clear now. Everybody will know exactly.”

All things told, Bud Selig can’t really be blamed for the near catastrophe. There had never been a situation in World Series history where weather affected the game in such a manner; this was an extremely unique circumstance. And now, it’s been righted so nothing like this can ever happen again. Hooray.

Which is a shame really, because press conferences where Bud Selig makes faces like the picture above don’t happen often enough.

Or perhaps you would prefer “Like Iverson does rhymes”? Right. Anywho, the moral of the story is that Philadelphia fans can apparently throw empty bottles of Grey Goose Vodka pretty freaking hard. How do I know? Well, I know because of the following video, showing a Rays fan on a traffic light pole who gets domed by a Philly fan’s bottle of Goose. As they say in Pittsburgh, “atch.”

I don’t keep watching this, posting this and forwarding this because I enjoy seeing people get hurt. Or pegged in the head with liquor bottles (although I’m not entirely opposed). And it’s not that I’m all that enthralled with seeing the city of Philadelphia slowly melt into Riotville post World Series. It’s just so GD amazing to see how accurately this guy can sling a bottle of Goose. Simply stunning.

Via everywhere.

Both presidential tickets have made mistakes this election cycle — though one has made considerably more than the other — but one failure they both share is their inability to talk about the World Series well. Both Obama and McCain, and by proxy Palin, have managed to completely forget that there are cameras trained on them while they’re speaking. You can’t just say you’re rooting for everybody. It doesn’t work.

Anyway, the Phillies won the World Series, which means that both candidates absolutely must bring this up at every stump speech in Pennsylvania. Apparently, even in Pirates country:

It was a throwaway line meant to be a crowd-pleaser. But it fell flat. On Thursday at a rally in Erie, Pa., Sarah Palin touted the victors in the World Series to thousands of supporters. “I am thrilled to be here in the home state of the world-champion Philadelphia Phillies,” Palin said.

The crowd booed.

Philadelphia is a seven-hour drive from Erie, which is in the state’s far west. Erie’s baseball devotions are split between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cleveland Indians. (Pittsburgh and Cleveland are about two hours away.)

You would think, after spending all that money on the ground game in Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign would be able to do a little research into which teams like what fans and where. Erie is seven hours away from Philly! (Check TSB for a map demonstrating this point.) Maybe Palin just assumed that in the Lower 48, there’s no room for intrastate sports disagreements. I don’t know. At this point, there’s no point trying to figure her out.

But, um, screw you, Erie. Yeah. You’re not the real Pennsylvania anyway.

The Rays wore blue and were captivating, inspiring, likeable, and young. The Phillies wore red, were a little older, and were underestimated. The Phillies won, and we can only assume that they were bolstered by the selection of Sarah Palin as their running mate.

Watching last night’s three-inning webisode of a game proved to be a strange experience. The momentum was different, and the sense of urgency was appreciable from the first pitch. The Phillies played solid baseball, but the Rays may have necessitated the first World Series Game 6 in five years, had a couple of situations fallen their way.

In the seventh, Jason Bartlett reached second. Iwamura beat out an infield grounder to Chase Utley at second, but Utley seemed to have gamed the unholy hell out of Bartlett with his fake to first. I’m still not sure whether Bartlett was waved home, but he attempted to score from second base on an infield hit, and Utley gunned him out. To be fair, Bartlett wasn’t out by much, but if he’d held at third, the Rays could have had runners on the corners with Carl Crawford at bat.

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Talking to a friend the other day, we both agreed that people — and by “people,” we meant “we” — were getting really, really tired of this election. He being one of the most politically enthusiastic people I know, I was surprised that he shared this sentiment. But it’s true. This thing really can’t end soon enough. I can’t do it anymore. Won’t do it! Can’t listen to it! Can’t watch stupid political Youtubes anymore! Can’t do it!

Anyway, that was my way of preemptively apologizing. This is another political item. Brace yourself.

Sen. John McCain made a direct appeal to baseball lovers Tuesday morning while mocking his rival’s decision to buy 30 minutes of television time Wednesday night for an address to the nation.

“No one will delay the World Series with an infomercial when I’m president,” he said to the approval of a crowd of thousands at a stadium here.

Yeah! Television networks won’t be operating independent of the government! And every Diamondbacks broadcast will be shown live on every single network … all day. Because, as we all know, pushing the start times of sports games back is just un-American.

In fact, McCain’s own convention speech this summer forced a change in the start time of the NFL’s season opener, which started an hour and a half earlier to accommodate McCain’s speech.

To be fair, he said after he was president, so that technically doesn’t count? Ehh?

Of course this is all beside the point. Here’s what matters: Which candidate will make sure that, after the election, they never say or do or even think anything about sports, ever, ever again? That’s the world I one day want to live in.

As noted earlier by Eamonn, the remainder of Game 5 of the World Series is scheduled to begin completion tonight at 8:37 PM. Many of us have seen a game suspended after the first pitch due to weather conditions, but in the vast majority of instances, the remainders of these games have been tacked on to a future scheduled matchup between the two teams in questions. In other words, you got something like a 1.5-header out of it. The remaining innings were played, immediately after which you were able to enjoy another game in its entirety.

Tonight’s game baseball-playing exercise will be unique for two reasons. First off, there has never been a suspension of a World Series game. The second reason, one I find more intriguing, is that it’s very possible that we’ll only watch three and a half innings of baseball tonight. Maybe just three if the Phillies retain a lead. Let’s think about that. What is it going to be like for you, the baseball fan, to watch that little baseball?

Psychologically, what will this do to you? An example: I didn’t come to appreciate HBO programming until a few years ago. For the first twenty years of my life, I was used to watching a half-hour of television comprised of twenty-two minutes of programming and eight minutes of commercials. Then I started watching thirty minutes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Fascinatingly, I found that around twenty-two minutes in, I was expecting the show to end. But, nope, eight more minutes of Larry David ambling through a neolib lifestyle and contributing nothing to anyone. Television, more than perhaps anything else, is adept at conditioning us. You know this game may last only three innings, but you may not actually process it, and if the game does end after an hour, you will be a disappointed and unhappy individual, especially considering that you may not see another baseball game for months.

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We’ve talked at some length about Barack Obama’s mid-World Series closing argument, his half-hour special set to air tonight. Initially, the campaign got CBS, NBC and ABC to air it, but had some trouble getting FOX, which was set to air the least-watched World Series of all time, on board. Then FOX agreed to play ball. (Get it? Like baseball?)

Now, the Obama campaign has gotten really lucky: Tonight’s final few Game 5 innings will be pushed back about 20 minutes, from 8:20 to 8:37. Presumably, people in Florida and Pennsylvania, both important swing states, will tune in expecting the game and will see the last 20 minutes of Obama’s half-hour paid advertisement.

Infuriated, some of these people will turn off their televisions. Some will keep watching. Some will watch for a few minutes, scratch themselves a few times, and then flip over to “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF,” or something. Some people will turn on their Xbox 360 and sneak in a quick game of Fifa on Live before the game starts. And some people will get drunk, pass out, and wake up for work in the morning feeling deep, penetrating personal shame at having such a horrific weekday alcohol habit. These people will try, and fail, to get their lives together.

America. F–k yeah.