MAJOR LEAGUES
With more bad weather expected on Tuesday, Major League Baseball bumped unfinished Game 5 of the World Series to yesterday.
The Philadelphia Phillies were one win away from capturing their first Fall Classic crown in 28 years, holding a 3-1 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays in the best-of-seven series.
Phillies manager Charlie Manuel and Rays manager Joe Maddon on Tuesday both tried to spin the bizarre development as an advantage for their teams.
The game was suspended — a first in 104 World Series — midway through the sixth and was to be resumed at Citizens Bank Park with the Phillies coming to bat for the bottom half of the inning.
“We’ve got three-and-a-half innings of baseball,” Manuel told reporters in a conference call. “We get to bat four times, they get to bat three. We get 12 outs and they get nine. We are definitely coming with the mindset that we will win that game and that’s all we want to be focused on.”
Maddon, whose team tied the contest with a run in the top of the sixth against Phillies starter Cole Hamels, had a different view.
“I think us coming back like we did and sitting on it for a day or two possibly could weigh in our favor a little bit,” the Rays manager said in his conference call.
“He [Hamels] has been so good, and to scratch out the runs that we’ve had has been very difficult ... so getting him out is important,” Maddon said about Hamels, who would not be ready to continue pitching when the game resumed.
The managers agreed the field became treacherous, but both declined to comment on whether play should have stopped earlier.
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