Baseball playoffs: The cursed sport continues

I’m sitting here trying to watch a little playoff baseball — the Tiger-Yankee game is postponed by rain — knowing that the post-season can’t hope to match the final night of the regular season, when four playoff-deciding games were staged with various stages of fabulous drama.

But even the fantastic finishes — the Orioles rallying past the Red Sox and the Rays beating the Yankees in extra innings to cap a 7-run rally, both within four minutes of each other – were cursed. Both finished after 11 p.m. That’s after midnight on the East Coast.

Sure, a ton of baseball fans stayed up to watch. But no novices. No borderline fans who might have been captivated by the agony and ecstasy of autumn baseball.

Think about this. This is the first time in decades that baseball scheduled its regular-season finales for mid-week. Had those games finished up on Sunday, they would have been in late afternoon, even with the extra innings. Of course, one game might have been shifted to ESPN — probably the Yanks — so we wouldn’t have had the simultaneous drama.

But finishing on Wednesday, every game was destined for night, and the extra innings of the Phillies-Braves and Yanks-Rays, plus the rain delay in Baltimore, sent the sport hurtling past midnight.