From National Pastime to National Past-Your-Bedtime

No. No, you can’t stay up until past midnight to watch the World Series.

No, you can’t hide under your covers with the iPhone that I shouldn’t have given you yet and listen to the game on the radio. No, this isn’t a lazy summer evening when it’s barely dusk by 9 p.m. and when you can sleep in until 11 tomorrow. This is a school night in late October and you’re in middle school now and besides, you have reading to do and you’re already too cranky when we get you up in the morning.

No, actually, your late, baseball-loving grandfather never did it. The World Series was played during the day back then. The daytime. Yeah. Amazing, huh?

No. I don’t care if you love the Red Sox and I don’t care if you want to see Manny Machado play in his first World Series. No, I don’t care that David Freese was on the Pirates until the Aug. 31 trade and is back in the part of the post-season that made him famous in the first place.

No. Go to bed. It’s almost 11. You’re almost 12.

No, no, no, no and no. Also: Get off my lawn, you damn kids!

Baseball, you’re spewing out parental agita like balled-up pieces of clothing from a T-shirt gun with this thing you’ve been doing lately with the concept of “late” - by which we mean late game starts in late October and, very occasionally since 2001, November.

Yes, it’s called the Fall Classic. But we’ve started living in an era when Mr. October could conceivably be Mr. November, and The Boys of Summer are now quite squarely The Boys of Harvest and Hayride Season.

Fine. The baseball-industrial complex has gotten used to that, as evidenced by all the cool coldweather gear worn this week by the Red Sox and Dodgers that undoubtedly will be bought as holiday gifts by all of us wannabes already anticipating the arrival of pitchers and catchers in February.

But it’s the late starts - and, by logical extension, the late endings - that are chafing the horsehide of some fans, particularly those of the parental variety. In these days of dinnertime darkness and fall-semester academic commitments, the National Pastime has become the National Past-YourBedtime.