Tampa – The afterglow of winning the American League Championship didn’t last long for Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon. “Let’s face it,” said the plain-spoken Maddon in an on-field television interview moments after defeating the Boston Red Sox 3-1, “no one’s gonna watch the World Series this year. Us and Philly? Who cares?”

 

Before TBS’s surprised-looking interviewer, Craig Sager, could ask Maddon a follow-up question about his unexpected remarks, a power outage plunged Tropicana Field into darkness. When electricity was restored 20 minutes, Maddon was no longer available to the press.

 

In a hastily arranged press conference, a spokesman for Major League Baseball claimed that a technical snafu caused the words of comedian Steve Harvey to appear to be coming out of Maddon’s mouth in the live Sager interview.  

 

“As the world knows, TBS has been experiencing on-going technical difficulties,” said the plainly irritated MLB spokesman, referring to the network’s running a rerun The Steve Harvey Show rather than the first inning of Saturday’s Game 6 of the ALCS.

 

“Apparently Mr. Harvey is continuing to haunt us,” explained the spokesman, who hastened to add that Major League Baseball thought the comedian was very funny.

 

Progress Energy asserted that the company was vigorously investigating the cause of the blackout and would follow the evidence wherever it led. Investigators denied a report that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig was seen running from a Progress electric sub-station across the street moments after the outage interrupted Maddon’s comments.

 

“Commissioner Selig expects record viewership and ad revenue for the 2008 World Series,” said the MLB spokesman, adding that both Philadelphia and Tampa have “bunches of old people who our male virility advertisers are looking forward to reaching during the Series.”