PHILADELPHIA — Welcome to November. Thanksgiving is in 3 weeks. And it's still baseball season.

Citizens Bank Park was far from dark Sunday night. It was in full-throated playoff

operation for Game Four of the World Series — just the second time in history the

schedule has stretched into the year's penultimate month.

Sunday marked just the second time ever all four major pro sports leagues played on the

same day. The only other time MLB, the NFL, NHL and NBA all played was on Nov. 4, 2001. That

was the night of the Yankees' Game Seven loss at Arizona in the World Series that was pushed

back a week due to the 9/11 attacks.

That was a one-time occurrence. This may not be. The talk of multiple off days during the

postseason has been almost as hot as umpiring mistakes. But while the men in blue might be

getting help from more liberal use of instant replay next season, don't expect much relief

from the schedule dragging on and on.

"You want to be playing at this time of year. It means you're in the World Series,"

Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino said after Saturday's rain-delayed, 8-5 loss in Game

Three that got us into November because it ended at 12:42 a.m. "I don't look at it like it's

November. I know it is today, but you just have to keep playing. We're in the World Series.

When you're playing doesn't matter, you just have to go out and win."



Television contracts with FOX and TBS for the playoffs stretch through 2013. And that, of

course, means they get much of the decision-making power on the games.

One thing Fox wanted to do starting in 2007 was have only one World Series game on a

Saturday, the lowest rated night in television land. So it asked for a mid-week start. That

meant a four-day delay from its normal Saturday start in the Oct. 20 range. This year, because

of the World Baseball Classic, it didn't start until Oct. 28. If we go to Game Seven, it

wouldn't end until Nov. 5.

Fox's request for a different Series schedule also meant more time in the earlier rounds.

Both the Yankees and Angels, for instance, took 20 days to play their first eight postseason

games. The Phillies have waited six days to start the World Series both years after they

clinched the NLCS.

"This is not the template for baseball," Angels manager Mike Scioscia grumbled during the

ALCS.

There's two or three days off in the division series, which is only a best-of-five affair.

There's a day off between Games Four and Five of both LCS series — even though there's

no travel involved that day. The teams that make the LCS can't get started even if both

division series end early; the NBA will start the next round right away if the chance presents

itself even if the other conference is still in the late stages of the earlier round.

So there we were Saturday night, with gobs of fans dressed in Halloween costumes in the

ballpark for what was only Game Three. Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte didn't even have much of

his family in the stands to watch him extend his postseason record with his 17th career win.

His kids wanted to stay home to go trick or treating.

"My daughter is extremely upset that I am not going to be home," Pettitte said when the

series shifted here. "She's going to be home going to the Halloween carnival at our church,

and she did not want to come here. My wife is flying up here to be with me, but my kids, they

want to be home for Halloween and go around trick or treating and do the things that they

normally do. I'm not going to mess with that."



Initially, baseball said all those off days could be used as buffers against rainouts. But

that hasn't been much of an issue. Baseball is an everyday game and one of the major points

being made is that things are too different in the postseason, with pitchers able to catch up

on their rest and hitters unable to get into any rhythm with everyday at-bats.

"We plan to take a look at it," commissioner Bud Selig said last week when the Series was

in New York. "But how do you know in the middle of March if a series in October is going to go

three games, four games or five games? How do you know if you're going to need an East

Coast-West Coast travel day as you did with Boston and Anaheim?"



The solution, of course, is an easy one and it's one the owners will never agree to.

Cutting the season to 154 games would make for a quick fix. So would 3-4 scheduled

double-headers per team. But the loss of revenue would be too great and big-market teams that

regularly fill their stadiums like the New York and Los Angeles clubs, Boston and the Chicago

Cubs would never agree to them.

"You play 162 games. I've said for a long time that if the clubs want to go back to 154, we

can reduce a lot of this," Selig said. "But they unanimously don't want to do that. The fact

is, there's nothing much we can do. Do I hate going into November? Of course. Nobody worries

about the weather more than I do."