King Kaufman's Sports Daily

The rain says no to Game 4, but what are we doing playing baseball Halloween week anyway? Plus: Fox's rainy-night gift.

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Oct. 26, 2006 | You gave up? You turned off the TV? You didn't think they'd play Game 4 of the World Series despite the rain in St. Louis?

Oh, ye of little faith. You missed a lot once they got going.

There was a five-run homer and the first-ever quadruple steal. Right around 4 a.m., Albert Pujols pitched an inning. He'd have retired the side in order too, if not for that giant sinkhole in center field that swallowed up Jim Edmonds as he was camped under a fly ball. It took the center-field fence too.

The game was finally called moments later after someone in the left-field bleachers yelled out, "Won't somebody please think of David Eckstein?"

Not a moment too soon. Is it safe to say the aesthetics of baseball suffer a bit when the wind chill dips below 40, as it tends to do in late October in quite a few major league cities, including the two represented in the 2006 World Series, St. Louis and Detroit?

Or maybe I dreamed the whole thing. I don't see how I could have fallen asleep, considering how wired I was with the anticipation of watching a ballgame that started after 10 p.m. EDT, which was threatened for quite a while. Why, the prospect of getting to watch Tony La Russa make three pitching changes in a single inning -- the sixth -- at midnight local time is enough to get anyone's blood rushing.

I did have plenty of time to think about this whole playing baseball in the last week of October thing, or actually not playing baseball as the case may be. And as the case turned out to be on Wednesday night. Game 4 was postponed after a one-hour, 51-minute delay and rescheduled for Thursday night, with Game 5 shifting to Friday, formerly a travel day.

But more rain is scheduled for the next two days in St. Louis and it's unclear when the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers will get to play again. Things aren't any more salubrious in Detroit, where the Series returns for Game 6 Saturday, if necessary. And if possible.

What are we doing here, trying to stage baseball games in hockey weather? The World Series used to be over by the second week of October, but it's been pushed back a total of 18 days, first by the advent of the League Championship Series, then by its expansion from five games to seven, and then by the introduction of the divisional round.

It's only going to get worse next year because the new TV contract with Fox calls for the World Series to start on a Tuesday. That's either four days earlier or three days later than the current start. Guess which it's going to be. Coming soon: That crazy Halloween pastime, waiting out a World Series rain delay.

Next page: If you're going to play baseball in snow, do it in March. Plus: Fox puts on a show. A really bad show