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.
