Packed into his feature on last night's Yankee victory, ESPN columnist Jim Caple has reported this morning that he heard a Yankees player say that because of the extremely tight travel schedule necessitated by the rainout the teams had on Saturday, and the fact that the series has gone five, MLB will move the NLCS opener up one day to Tuesday, and move the ALCS opener back a day to Wednesday.
My first reaction to this is that even if that Yankee player is Alex Rodriguez, it is unlikely that Bud and his cronies make him privy to their highest level discussions. Odds are, this is an unsubstantiated rumor that Caple probably should not have run with.
But then again, there is a sort of verisimilitude to the report. It sounds as if it could be true. The money represented by the Yankee machine should not be underestimated, and of course, the simplest solution--if you even feel there is a problem--of playing BOTH games Wednesday, would make Fox rather unhappy.
And they have sway over monies that make the Yankees look like paupers.
Such a switch would be highly unfair to the White Sox, who worked very hard to put themselves in an advantageous situation, and much more importantly, to the Astros, who quite rightly would feel that they are entitled to the rest promised them after yesterday's marathon.
The Astros could even make the argument that if they had known about a projected change in the schedule, they might even have conducted their game differently, although I'm not sure how airtight that line of reasoning would be.
Pure and simple, no-one should be feeling sorry for the Yankees and the Angels 'cause the winner will have to make two red eyes, just as no-one was feeling sorry for the Astros yesterday when they were out of both position players and pitchers. No-one then was saying, "OK. After eighteen, we'll suspend and restart tomorrow with fresh rosters."
And no-one should be trying to toss the Yankees a life raft now, either.
Problem is, you kind of need Bud to make the proper decision here, in the face of a lot of money, so we'll see how that goes.
If, of course, the rumor is even substantiated.