Steady rain postpones Game 4 of Series

ST. LOUIS – Pitchers dominated the first three games of the World Series and the rain took over.

Game 4 was postponed Wednesday night because of rain and will be made up today at 5:27 p.m. PDT, potentially sending the World Series into scheduling chaos. More showers are expected the next two days, and nobody was certain when the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals would play again.

“They’re going to be dicey,” said Jimmie Lee Solomon, executive vice president of baseball operations in the commissioner’s office.

Game 5 at Busch Stadium was pushed back to Friday night, which was supposed to be a day off in the Series. It doesn’t look much better this weekend in Detroit, with a forecast of rain and cold.

The Cardinals lead the best-of-7 Series 2-1 after a 5-0 victory behind ace Chris Carpenter on Tuesday night. A silver tarp covered the infield all evening. Players didn’t come out to warm up and Game 4 never got started.

“You want to go out there and play, but you can’t control the weather. It’s not that big of a deal,” St. Louis outfielder Preston Wilson said.

Steady showers all day led to the first World Series rainout since the 1996 opener between the Atlanta Braves and New York Yankees. The rain fell harder as the night progressed, and the game was called after a delay of 1 hour, 51 minutes, the first time a Series game in St. Louis has been rained out.

It also was the fourth washout of this wet postseason. The Cardinals had two games rained out in the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets, and Game 2 of Detroit’s first-round series at Yankee Stadium also was postponed.

The postponement gives St. Louis manager Tony La Russa a chance to juggle his rotation if he wants.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland could do the same with Kenny Rogers, who beat Weaver in Game 2 on Sunday night and extended his shutout streak to 23 innings this postseason. But Leyland specifically set up his rotation to give Rogers two starts at home, and the Series doesn’t shift back to Detroit until Game 6.

A sparse crowd at Busch Stadium was informed of the rainout about three minutes after Major League Baseball made the announcement. Fans covered in plastic quickly filed toward the exits.