Four hours, six minutes.

Let me repeat that. Four hours, six minutes.

That’s not my time in the marathon. That’s how long it took the Phils and Rockies to complete the marathon Game 3 of their NLDS game in a frigid Coors Field in Denver last night.

First pitch was at 10:07. You do the math. That’s right. When Brad Lidge (yes, Brad Lidge!) got Troy Tulowitzki to fly out to left to preserve a nail-biting 6-5 Phils win, it was after 2 a.m.

I won’t bore you with the details of what kind of a nightmare this creates for newspapers, and newspaper editors. Let me just say that our normal deadline is 11:40.

Yes, we printed some papers last night without the score of the game.
For the most part those were our home-delivery papers. We included a box that indicated the game ended too late for that edition and urged readers to go to our Web site for complete coverage.

It’s something I hate to do, in effect punishing our best customers, but we had little choice.

Yet despite the fact that the game started at an ungodly hour here on the East Coast, and despite the even more ungodly temperature at game time, a wintry-like 35 degrees, the Phils and Rockies still managed to draw up a classic.

That 35-degree reading tied a major league record set in Game 4 of the
1997 World Series when Cleveland hosted Florida.

The Phils and Rockies quickly heated things up, swapping the lead 6 different times.

No doubt there are a lot of bleary eyes heading out this morning, unless you’re one of the lucky ones who has Columbus Day off.

Tonight, we get a break, but only because all of the other series are now wrapped up. If the Twins had beaten the Yankees yesterday, we’d be looking at another 10:07 start. But with the Phils and Rockies now having the stage to themselves, we get a much more manageable 6:07 start.

It’s enough to warm a newspaper editor’s heart. Which just might have to be restarted if we see Brad Lidge in the ninth inning again tonight.