Philadelphia waited 15 years to host another World Series game. Jamie Moyer waited 45 to pitch one.
Look at it that way and 91 minutes doesn't seem like such a big deal.
That was the soggy, seemingly eternal gap between last night's scheduled start time and the actual first pitch of Game 3. The string of autumn showers moved through the region a little slower than the suits at Major League Baseball (and, just as important, Fox Television) anticipated, but the sky did eventually stop pouring rivers on the field at Citizens Bank Park.
At times like this, there is a tendency to blame MLB for the impact the weather has on its games, and there is a basis for a little criticism.
Like every other major professional and collegiate sport, baseball's deal with the TV devil means unnaturally late start times for marquee events. The Super Bowl is scheduled so that it can have maximum impact on primetime advertising rates for the network that overpaid for the rights to it. The NCAA men's national championship game starts after 9 p.m. Eastern time, and on and on and on.
The answer to almost every "why" question about sports scheduling is as simple as TV. The networks pay the bills, the networks call the shots. And that is why World Series games start later than every other game in this time zone that you've watched all year. The longer commercial breaks - the network needs to recoup all that money somehow - make the games run longer and are the reason you're sleepy at work or school the morning after watching.
In this case, the late scheduled start wasn't much of a factor. It's not like it was a perfect sunny afternoon that turned ugly with the onset of evening. This would have been a mess at any time yesterday.
The other thing MLB controls is the length of its season. The World Series extends all the way to October's border with November because of the addition of the wild-card and the extra round of playoffs. Those have been widely praised innovations, however. Can't have it both ways.
The TV schedule also complicates the mechanics of postponing games. Fox wants this Series over by Thursday. That means moving things back costs the players an off day Tuesday. But a postponement also affects the Series directly: It might have led to the Phillies starting Cole Hamels instead of Joe Blanton in Game 4 - good for the Phils, in this case, but still an unintended consequence.
The argument that MLB should have been quicker to postpone Game 3 dissolved the moment it started. The people most affected by the delay, the players and the fans in the ballpark, seemed just fine, thank you.
Start with the die-hards.
One solution to the late-October, bad-weather World Series conundrum is to move the whole event to a neutral site. Have it in San Diego or Arizona or somewhere with a dome. That would reduce or eliminate the chances of weather issues. It would also reduce or eliminate the character and color of games played in home ballparks, in front of home fans.
You think the fans at the Bank last night would rather have waited in the rain or watched this on TV, live from Miller Field in Milwaukee?
The sellout crowd answered that question loudly and happily. The fans were damp but not dampened. Quite the contrary. They roared at Tampa Bay's first two outs as if they were the last two. They booed every time home plate umpire Fieldin Culbreth called one of Moyer's pitches a ball, even if it was a foot low.
Then they started in on Evan Longoria.
The fans here get a lot of grief, some of it deserved and much of it the result of stale, outdated stories (we know, we know, we booed Santa). But this was flat-out genius, chanting "Eva, Eva, Eva" at the unfortunately monickered rookie.
It wasn't even a question of originality. It was sheer volume. It sounded as if every Philadelphian from Wm. Penn on down was in full throat: "Eva, Eva, Eva." The Fox cameras even caught Rays manager Joe Maddon (who is, after all, from Hazleton, Pa.) in the dugout, laughing.
As for the players, they were fine, too. Moyer got off to his best start of the postseason in his third try. Jimmy Rollins led off with a single, his first hit of the Series, then scored a station-to-station run to give the Phils a quick lead. Carlos Ruiz - Carlos Ruiz!! - followed his double-double Game 2 with a solo homer to left in his first at-bat.
Ten, 20, 30 years from now, when Philadelphians look back on the 2008 World Series, that is what they're going to remember: "Eva" and Chooch's rocket and whatever happened after deadline passed.
The weather? It will be gone with the wind.
Contact columnist Phil Sheridan at 215-854-2844 or psheridan@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/philsheridan.
