Great work, Fox and MLB!

Yes, last night's World Series game still would have ended really late, but why was the first pitch not made until 8:39 p.m. last night? Did we really need the performance by Wynonna Judd, Michael McDonald, Eric Benet, a choir, etc. of Wynonna's new song before the national anthem?

And most amazingly, with 39 minutes of pre-game, Fox still couldn't fit in showing Nolan Ryan throwing out the first pitch live, but had to show a brief snippet on tape. I'm no Astros fan, but it does seem that seeing one of the most famous Astros ever throw out the first pitch at the first World Series game in Houston might be a little bit more interesting than a pre-game concert to most baseball viewers. (Although there probably were a number of viewers who enjoyed saying, "Hey, that's the guy that cheated on Halle Berry" when Eric Benet came on the screen.)

I thought when the problem of late starts and even later endings first came to the surface in the late 1990s, Major League Baseball agreed to start weekend playoff games by 7:30 and weekday games by 8:15. I guess they forgot about that. But of course, the baseball owners are the same gang of incompetents who still haven't gotten around to selling the Washington Nationals, more than a year after the team was awarded to the city. And this morning, a story in The Washington Times reports that the holdup, according to city sources, is that MLB wants some kind of clause not making the owner pay rent if the team can't play in the stadium because of natural disaster or terrorist attack. Talk about greed--the lease payments are only $6 million a year, which is a whole lot of money in my world, but not much in the world of baseball. And when you look at Tom Benson of the New Orleans Saints, who is reportedly using Katrina as a way to move his team out of the city, I can't blame the District for not giving in. Especially if the team ends up with an outsider like Smulyan. But that's a rant for another time...