Selig's Folly

The Washington Post's Dave Shenin neatly captures the essence of Bud Selig's leaderlesship and the countless questions that remain from his decisions/nondecisions on Monday night:

While Tuesday provided a day of rest and a chance to plot strategy for Wednesday night's resumption of play, it also invited further scrutiny of what occurred -- and what almost occurred -- during the extraordinary events of Monday night.

Much of the criticism of MLB's handling of the situation focused on the timing of the stoppage, in the middle of the sixth inning -- shortly after Carlos Peña's RBI single tied the game. Playing conditions began to deteriorate rapidly beginning in around the fifth inning, at which point, had it been a regular season game, play almost certainly would have been halted.

However, if the game had been halted in the bottom of the fifth or top of the sixth, with the Phillies ahead by a run, Selig -- who had already decided the game would played to completion, no matter what, and had conveyed that intention to both managers before the game -- would have been forced to utilize his vaguely outlined "best interests of the game" powers to suspend a game that, by rule, would have been over, with the Phillies claiming a rain-shortened victory.

But neither manager informed his players of Selig's intentions to play nine innings regardless, which, in the case of the Rays, had them playing the top of the sixth inning as if it were the ninth, with the possibility of elimination bearing down on them.

"We thought we had to score," Rays left fielder Carl Crawford told reporters. "We thought we'd better do something, or that was going to be it."