To practice outside with gloves on; I’ll bet Barkley never did that. Langdon also played minor league baseball in the Padres’ system, so he’s kind of a baseball player, too. Barkley should shut up, but they probably should have played, too.

I’m not sure how early in the day the decision was made — the temperature was still below 20 at late as 10am or so, and that was probably the impetus for rounding all the decision makers up for a conference call or whatever. With the World Series extending into November for the first time on purpose (not the first time in fact, which of course was 2001), perhaps MLB is already a little bit sensitive to criticisms regarding games played under unfavorable conditions so late in the year, and they pulled the plug on yesterday’s game in order to forestall more of that.

Anyway, regarding Barkley’s nonsense: of course the “sissies” have no influence over when the game is played. Any wonk in Selig’s office who frets over potential damage to baseball’s image that could be incurred by playing a nationally televised game under frigid conditions would have more influence than any actual player.