Rainouts. There's a better way

While watching the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians play a game in the rain (yes, even an international super-stud like yours truly has his boring days), I had an epiphany.

They've had this thing wrong all along.

Any baseball fan knows that after 5 innings are completed, a major league game is "official". After that point, if the game can't be completed for any reason, it's still going down in the record books as a win for one team and a loss for the other. Whether this was caused by an earthquake, a tsunami, the plague, locusts, nuclear war, or Bieber and Shaq holding hands while parachuting naked into the stadium singing two-part harmony to the banana boat song on their Mr. Microphones, it doesn't matter. Dayo-schmayo, the game's still over. (Just a thought, but given a choice, I'd rather take my chances with the nukes than be in the stadium if the BS combo came floating down from the sky in their birthday suits).

Thing is -- what about the games that don't make it to 5 complete innings?  It's happened hundreds, if not thousand of times over the years. Theoretically, if a game has gone 4 and two thirds innings, and Mother Nature decides to turn on some serious waterworks and throw a few lightning bolts around -- that game could be stopped, and never finished that day/night. It's not official yet.

Despite all the pitches thrown, possible hits, strike-outs, walks, errors, home-runs, RBIs, stolen bases, any runs scored, plays made in the field, etc., etc., it's like it never happened. It all gets erased. And that's just wrong.

There's a variety of ways these games can be "made up", or maybe not if it's toward the end of the season and replaying the game wouldn't matter either way to either team. That's happened too. But the vast majority of the time, the MLB braintrust, excuse the oxymoron if you're so inclined, will find a way to squeeze it in.

As mentioned above, the problem with the whole scenario is they start the game over from the beginning. Wouldn't it seem to make a lot more sense to continue the game from where it left off the last time around?

Consider: It would consist of less total innings, hence less wear and tear on the players. Good or bad, the stats they put up when the game originally started would still count -- as they should. More importantly, the score of the original game would reappear. If a team was ahead 10-0 after 3 innings before the rain came or the tectonic plates beneath the stadium suddenly shifted -- why should they have to start a rematch at 0-0? That's not fair.

It's even conceivably possible that erasing the stats from the start of the previous game could have implications on the record books. What if a hitter had a couple hits nullified and came up one percentage point shy of winning the batting crown at the end of the season? Not likely -- but stranger things have happened. Ya never know.

Regardless, if you're at a game, keep an eye out for the Big Aristotle and his dweeby little Canadian buddy. Ya never know when they might drop in either.

Not that I'm a big fan of such things, but that's the best argument for domed stadiums I can think of.

Hi special J. Get better soon. The kids miss you. Me too.