From a slow Monday . . .

Would someone please tell Bud Selig that baseball is meant to be played on green grass under blue skies as opposed to mud and pouring rain. What happened Monday night in Philly was an embarrassment. Isn't it time that Selig and the pooh-bahs started treating the game with the respect it deserves? . . . Oh well, at least Game 5 didn't end at 1:47 in the morning. . . . Oh, wait, it's not over yet!
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DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS: Vancouver Canucks D Jon Blum already is a WHL-leading plus-19. Dave Sheldon, the radio voice of the Giants, points out that only 50 players were plus-19 or better at the end of last season. Sheldon also has done some math – assuming Blum misses 10 WHL games while with Team USA at the World Junior Championship, he is on pace to finish at plus-125 this season. . . . By the way, the Giants have scored 25 PP goals this season, a 138-goal pace over 72 games. Last season, they led the league with 85 PPG. . . . Vancouver head coach Don Hay has 398 regular-season victories under his belt. Up next for the Giants, who have yet to lose in regulation time: At home to the Tri-City Americans on Wednesday and the Brandon Wheat Kings on Saturday. Tri-City head coach Don Nachbaur is at 393 victories. . . . Kootenay Ice captain Andrew Bailey has played in 243 consecutive games.
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JUST NOTES: The Saskatoon Blades, who are 10-0-1-0 in their last 11 games, have assigned D Tanner Sohn, 17, to the AJHL’s Lloydminster Bobcats. Sohn, the 246th pick in the 2006 bantam draft, was pointless in three games with the Blades, who now are down to seven defencemen. . . . Regina Pats RW Jordan Eberle has 10 points, including six goals, on a seven-game point streak. He reached the 80-goal plateau for his career on Sunday but has a ways to go to reach the Pats’ franchise record of 222. That record belongs to Pats head coach Dale Derkatch. . . . Wasn’t it Brandon Sutter who drilled Alexei Cherepanov during that Canada-Russia series in the late summer of 2007? Cherepanov, the Russian player who died earlier this month, missed three months after that hit. And will hits like that – and the one by Doug Weight of the N.Y. Islanders on Sutter, now of the Carolina Hurricanes – be part of the game until something is done to soften the equipment worn by players? . . . If you were building a home, could you use a hockey player’s elbow pads to hammer in the nails?