Throw the flag against: John McCain.
Call: Unsportsmanlike conduct.
What happened: "No one will delay the World Series game with an infomercial when I'm president," the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd Tuesday in Hershey, Pa.
Democratic rival Barack Obama bought the 8-8:30 p.m. slot on Fox and other major networks Wednesday night to air a campaign pitch. The first pitch of the World Series game, the resumption of rain-delayed Game 5, was set for approximately 8:37 p.m. EDT, about nine minutes later than usual.
Why that's wrong: It's not unusual for World Series games to start after 8:30 p.m., and according to the Web site Politico, the Fox executive who's responsible for the Obama ad purchase said the infomercial was replacing only the pre-game show.
"Our first pitch for the World Series is usually around 8:30 anyway, so we didn't push back the game. It was really just about suspending the pre-game, you know, Joe Buck," said the account executive, Joe Coppola. "That's all we did."
The request to delay the game came from Major League Baseball.
McCain himself was responsible for shifting the time of the National Football League's 2008 opening game. NBC moved the Washington Redskins-New York Giants game up at least an hour, to 7 p.m. EDT, so that McCain's Republican convention speech could be broadcast around 10 p.m. on Sept. 4.
Penalty: 15 yards for misleading the public about Obama and the World Series.
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