We are the Champions?

The World Series is over, and yet it doesn’t quite seem right!

The Philadelphia Phillies are celebrating and yet it seems cheap.

This series has been unlike any other, providing more debate due in large part to the longest rain delay in Major League Baseball history. While playing in a sixth inning that should never have started, the Tampa Bay Rays tied the score on a strategically placed hit by Carlos Pena, on a field that was unplayable even to the most untrained of eyes.

Immediately following the game tying hit, the tarp was rolled out as the commissioner most known for controversial decisions made another one as soon as he was not in danger of being the leader under whose watch the World Series ended in a rain shortened 5th game. That decision would haunt him as inadvertently he has now become the man whose indecisiveness in tough spots caused him to be the person under whose watchful eye that same 5th game would be finished two days after it began.

While neither team had a significant advantage after two days of inactivity, the conclusion of game five would be a tough fought battle. No one seemed to know how to react, the bullpen would be called upon from the start of this abbreviated night, and he lineups would not have their usual time to get the feel for the game.

With this delay and the crack of the Philadelphia bats, the dream season is over for the Tampa Bay Rays. It was all but destined after an ALCS where they went to the precipice with Boston, they had nothing left but to be pushed over the edge by a team and a city who has waited for this moment since 1980.

While disappointed, the Rays and their fans must find solace in their sequence of firsts in a season that had so many. If the ability to keep this nucleus together presents itself, it is conceivable that they will find themselves in a similar position in the near future. The only difference for this young team is that when that situation presents itself, they will carry with them the experience of this night; a night that was as abnormal as the fact that this otherwise underdog team found themselves in this circumstance in the first place.

Along with the congratulations being showered upon the Phillies today, must go a feeling of emptiness, an emptiness in knowing that we will never know the result of game five had it been played in its usual 3 hour time frame as opposed to the two day time frame allowed by Bud Selig. While Selig can not be blamed for the rain which soaked the field, it is altogether fitting that much like the All Star Game a couple years back, the outcome of this entire season, was decided not on the field, but in the commissioners’ skybox.

So we applaud the Phillies all while thinking what may have been, and the Tampa Bay Rays are left to ponder, if only the national league had won the All Star game!