Prior to the 2007 season, Baseball adopted a rule stating that any tie game that is called after becoming official (five innings) would simply be suspended and resumed from the stopping point at a later date just as if it had experience any other extended rain delay. That is what the Rays and Phillies will do tonight, resuming Game 5 in the bottom of the sixth inning at 8:37pm. My preview of what I’m calling Game 5 1/2 is up on SI.com.

Baseball’s rules also state that any game that the home team is winning after 4 1/2 innings is official and will stand as a complete game if called before the completion of nine innings. That conjurs the surreal thought of the Phillies clinching their first world championship in 28 years while sitting around in the Citizens Bank Park clubhouse when the game was officially called several hours after the last out of the fifth had been recorded. However, Commissioner Bud Selig said that, even if the Rays had not tied the game in the top of the sixth, he would not have allowed a World Series game to end without all nine innings being played. Still, no matter what happens from here on out, whether the Phillies clinch in three innings tonight, or the Rays battle back and push the Series back to Florida, it’s going to feel weird.

If the Rays do pull out a victory tonight, the Series will move back to Florida tomorrow for Game 6, with Game 7 to follow on Friday (though the latter hasn’t been made official just yet). Should the Rays win again tomorrow, the Phillies will have the option of pitching Hamels again in Game 7 on three-day’s rest. The Phillies have thus far been reluctant to start Hamels on short rest, but since he threw just 75 pitches on Monday night, one would think he would indeed get the call in a rescheduled Game 7. I suppose that’s only fair, as Hamels’ start was artificially shortened on Monday night with the Phillies one run and nine outs from the championship.

Had this game been played just two years ago, the cancellation of the game with the score tied after five innings would have required the entire game to be replayed from the start, essentially wiping out Game 5, along with its starting pitchers, and replacing it with Game 6. That sort of thing has happened thrice in World Series play, but not since 1922, when the Yankees and Giants played to a ten-inning tie in a Game 2 that was called on account of “darkness” (there were suspicions that the game was called early in order to enable the financial windfall of an extra game, so Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis had the Game 2 profits turned over to charity). Games in the 1912 and 1907 Series were also called due to darkness. In each of those three instances, the games were declared official ties rather than replayed, though that distinction is purely a book-keeping one.

Instead, Moyer quickly resurrected his career with the Orioles and, after a quick layover in Boston, emerged as an unconventional star with the Mariners just before the turn of the century. Last October, I found myself at his locker in Citizens Bank Park, interviewing him about Coors Field in anticipation of his Game 3 NLDS start, and now, 21 years after I pulled his rookie card out of a pack I bought on a trip to the mall with my mom, he’s starting his first World Series game at the age of 45, and I’m writing about how he could cost the team he grew up rooting for a chance at its second championship, for SI.com. I guess we’ve both come a long way.

Incidentally, the sight of Moyer in a Cubs cap on this card reminds me of the ex-Cub factor, a theory which was popularized in the 1980s stating that the winner of a playoff series could be determined by finding out which team had fewer former Cubs on its roster. The 2001 Diamondbacks (and the 2003 Cubs, who actually won a playoff series themselves) blew a hole in the theory, but for yucks, Phillies Moyer, Matt Stairs, and Scott Eyre outnumber the Rays’ lone ex-Cub, Cliff Floyd, three to one.

Finally, here’s the factoid from the back of the pictured card: “Jamie pitched 3 consecutive No-Hitters at Souderton Area High Scool, Souderton, Pa. in 1980.” Yes, 1980.

Stocker had taken over the Phillies shortstop job as a rookie in July of their pennant-winning season of 1993 and had since established himself as one of the game’s best defenders at the position. A 27-year-old switch-hitter who wouldn’t price himself off the team, Stocker was exactly what LaMar was looking for to anchor his new team’s infield. The problem was that LaMar had failed to notice the steep drop off in Stocker’s defense during the 1997 season. Stocker’s glove recovered in 1998, but he had his worst season at the plate, hitting just .208/.282/.313, and his season was mercifully ended a month early when his hand was broken by a pitch. The next year his bat picked up, but his glove work declined again, and knee tendonitis ended his season soon after the All-Star break.

That winter, LaMar scrapped his defense-first concept, signing aging sluggers Greg Vaughn and Vinnie Castilla to join Jose Canseco and original Ray Fred McGriff in the Tampa lineup. Stocker, the symbol of the Rays’ abandoned approach of just two years earlier, was released in May. Despite LaMar’s shift in focus, the Devil Rays of 2000 once again finished a distant last in the American League in runs scored. Making things worse, the young outfielder Lamar had used as currency to acquire stocker was a 23-year-old Bobby Abreu, who hit .312/.409/.497 as the Phillies’ right fielder in the Rays’ inaugural season of 1998 and proceeded to perform at a Hall of Fame level over his eight and a half seasons in Philadelphia.

Now, a decade later, LaMar is the Phillies’ scouting director, and his team is in the World Series against a Rays’ team that produced its first winning season, first playoff berth, first division title, and first pennant in part due to a renewed focus on pitching and defense. The signature player in that renewed focus is Jason Bartlett, a good-field/no-hit shortstop who was acquired for a talented young outfielder. The trick being that Bartlett wasn’t the key player in the deal that brought him to Tampa Bay from the Twins, righty starter Matt Garza was, and the outfielder he was traded for, Delmon Young, is no Bobby Abreu, which just goes to prove that intention is only as good as its execution.

To be fair, LaMar deserves to have a better legacy in Tampa Bay. It was under Lamar that the Rays drafted Aubrey Huff, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, James Shields, B.J. Upton, Andy Sonnanstine, and Young, and it was Lamar who fleeced the Mets in the Scott Kazmir deal. Still, it took a change in ownership and an overhaul of the front office for the Rays to figure out how to make proper use of that bounty.

My point in all of this is that, even in a World Series in which the two combatants have just one prior championship between them (the lowest combined total since 1980 when the Phillies and Royals met, both looking for their first), there is still some history here.

For more from me on this match-up, check out my position-by-position breakdown and preview of Game 1, both up on SI.com.