CLEVELAND — If the weather forecast for Wednesday night holds here at Progressive Field, we might be looking at a deja vu of the last time Joe Maddon managed in a World Series.
We might get ourselves a two-day Fall Classic game.
Major League Baseball moved up the first-pitch time by an hour for Wednesday’s Game 2, to 7:08 p.m. local time, in an attempt to beat the rain. However, according to Weather.com, the showers are supposed to arrive in the 9 p.m. hour and not go away. So unless the Indians and Cubs enter a serious time warp to the days when a two-hour game was common, nine innings probably won’t be completed by 9.
And this game will last nine innings, by hook or by crook, whether it has to conclude on Thursday or even on Friday, given Thursday’s shaky forecast. That’s thanks to a rule MLB enacted following the 2008 World Series, which nearly faced a public-relations fiasco.
Remember? In Game 5 of the 2008 Series, on Oct. 27 at Citizens Bank Park, the rain started getting biblical at the end of the fifth inning. The Phillies, leading the series three games to one, held a 2-1 lead in the game — meaning if conditions made the game unplayable, the Phillies would be winners, and champions, by the rules on the book. There would be no clinching play, no celebration on the field. Just a ruling by weather.
MLB clearly was determined not to let that happen. It lucked out when Maddon’s Rays tied the game, 2-2, thanks in large part to the Phillies’ difficulties playing defense in such horrible conditions. As soon as the half-inning ended, the tarp went on the field, and the game eventually was suspended. Because rain pelted the Philadelphia area the next day, play didn’t resume until Oct. 29, when the Phillies won the game and the title.
As it turned out, commissioner Bud Selig had no intention of ending his jewel event off the field. His office notified the Phillies and Rays of his intention to ignore the rules and play nine innings before Game 5 — though MLB didn’t announce this publicly, and it clearly let the top of the sixth occur in suboptimal conditions with the hopes that the Rays would score and render the issue moot. Following the season, baseball formalized the ruling that all postseason games had to go nine innings.
The rule has gone into effect just one time – Game 1 of the 2011 American League Division Series between the Yankees and Tigers at Yankee Stadium. An unexpected shower cut the contest short in the middle of the second inning, with the game tied at 1-1, and the two teams picked it up the next day. The Yankees won, 9-3.