It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least in this town, that the decline of western civilization began on April 6, 1973, when a designated hitter first stepped to the plate in a Major League Baseball game.

Bad things followed. Night World Series games. Interleague play. Wild card teams in the playoffs. The chickens all came home to roost Monday night in Philadelphia.

Game 5 of the 2008 World Series was played — well, two-thirds of it was played — in 40-degree temperatures and persistent rain. Add this to the list of terrible things spawned by the DH:  Baseball caps with earflaps. Phils’ shortstop Jimmy Rollins looked like he was dressed for a moose hunt with Sarah Palin.

The game was suspended in the middle of the sixth inning after the Tampa Bay Rays tied the game at 2, thus letting baseball Commissioner Lucky Bud Selig off the hook. The Phillies were up 3 games to 1. Had Game 5 been called because of rain with the Phillies leading 2-1, Lucky Bud would have had to decide whether the World Series could be won in a rain-shortened game that never should have begun.

So the game will resume tonight (weather permitting, and perhaps even it doesn’t) with a pinch hitter coming to the plate in the bottom of the 6th for Phils’ starter Cole Hamels. My sincere hope is that the Phils’ send Matt Stairs out to hit for Hamels, and that Stairs hits the first pitch out of the park, and then the Rays go down meekly in the 7th, 8th and 9th.

I’m picking Stairs because he’s fat, 40 and balding and looks more like Joe the Plumber than Joe the Plumber. He’s the perfect hero for this farce.

I almost felt sorry for Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, having to describe this abominable situation and not being able to admit that the real reason that Game 4 ended at 1:47 a.m. and Game 5 was played in a monsoon was that television demands it. The teams get hundreds of millions in TV rights money to pay the players $10 million a year so everyone must suck it up.

Only the integrity of the game suffers. And we stopped worrying about that on April 6, 1973.