Late World Series taunts irascible gods of weather

If the irascible weather gods have any sense of humor whatsoever, they will conspire to have Colorado covered with a foot of snow, a temperature of about 8 degrees, and a 20 mph wind blowing in from centerfield when the Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies take to Coors Field in Denver tonight to play the third game of baseball’s World Series.

That may not be what an athletic trainer would prescribe in the interest of preserving the multimillion-dollar arms attached to some of the more ridiculously overpaid ballplayers down on the field. But it just might smarten up the greedy moguls of Major League Baseball to the fact that they are pushing their luck with this elongated baseball season business. Might temporarily freeze their assets, so to speak.

They are the ones who, in quest of the almighty dollar, have gradually extended the regular baseball season and the post-season playoffs so that now, should the World Series go a full seven games, it will run into November.

That’s a month later than in those halcyon days of yore, when the fall classic was played in the daytime and fans regularly employed the dead-grandmother scam to skip work to listen to the game on their transistor radios or watch it on their newfangled television sets.

Granted, the way the shock-and-awe Red Sox are ripping through the post-season competition, this series would appear to have about as much chance of going seven games as I do of ever understanding one of those periodic “this-is-not-a-bill” statements from my health care provider. Which is to say none whatsoever.

If by some miracle a seventh game is required to determine a champion , it would be played in Boston on Nov. 1, possibly sliding into the wee hours of Nov. 2, when chances are good that Fenway Park might be more suitable for a game of pond hockey than baseball. Had the National League won last summer’s All-Star Game, a seventh game would have been played in mile-high Denver – out of doors, late at night – if you can picture that.

But, hey, if the greedmongers are dumb enough to sate their cash cow’s voracious appetite for money by scheduling a baseball game on Nov. 1 – out of doors, late at night – in any of the northern-tier major league cities that do not have a domed stadium, they are dumb enough to suffer the potential consequences, I suppose.

Playing baseball past midnight has become the norm, rather than the exception, in these post-season playoffs. For that you can thank television-dictated late starting times that have lost all contact with reality, and a game pace roughly that of a three-toed sloth on downers as managers occasionally outsmart themselves making strategic moves involving their bullpens – often seemingly for no other reason than they can.

Most working stiffs who have to get up the next morning to go to their jobs can’t stay up to see how a four-hour game turns out. And on school nights, their kids can’t even stay up to see the game begin. So much for catering to the real fans. And so much for getting the youngsters interested in the game so they might one day help in keeping the cash cow fed.

Not that they will be able to afford a ticket to a World Series game of the future, even if they do somehow become fans despite baseball’s best efforts to thwart them. A local sportscaster reported earlier this week that tickets for Fenway Park’s cheap seats were going for hundreds of dollars each, supposing you could find one. At that rate, I’d guess that the scalpers must be getting enough money per ticket for the better seats to put their kids through Harvard.

The choice seats, of course, have been reserved for The Beautiful People, whose interest lies not in watching a plebeian sporting match amongst the great unwashed, but in being seen attending the event. That and being able to drop into the conversation at their next wine and cheese party the fact that they had enough clout to score a ticket in the first place.

It has never seemed quite right to me that Joe Fan loyally supports his team, in whatever sport, through good times and bad the entire season, including buying the obscenely over-priced hot dogs and beer at the concession stands. Then, when his team makes it to the championship playoffs he gets stiffed by management in favor of a Beautiful Person who hasn’t set foot in the stadium all season.

But I suppose it’s the American Way.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. He may be reached by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.