Never before had seat cushions been available in case of a water landing at the World Series.

Not mid-game. Not, that is, until Game 5 on Monday night. When, with an entire city on the edge of its seat, the Philadelphia Phillies’ best pitcher on the mound and a championship within reach, Commissioner Bud Selig stepped in with a squeegee.

What he needed in his rain-slicker pocket was a retractable roof. Or a giant umbrella.

Or, failing that, a far better weather report and a much quicker judgment in calling the game that was suspended in the middle of the sixth inning with Philadelphia and Tampa Bay knotted up at 2-2 and flood waters rising.

On a night more suited for dolphins and submarines than for baseball’s jewel event, we saw a World Series first. No World Series game had ever been started and not played at least nine innings.

The immediate effects could hurt Philadelphia worse than the Rays, even though the Phillies lead three games to one. The suspension knocked their ace pitcher, Cole Hamels, from the mound after only 76 pitches.

“Naturally, we’re not happy that Hamels is out of the game,” Phillies general manager Pat Gillick said. “But one of the strengths of our ballclub is the bullpen. So when we pick this game up, be it (Tuesday) or Wednesday, whenever it might be, I think that Andrew (Friedman, Rays’ GM) and Joe (Maddon, Rays manager) and his club probably will be in the bullpen, also.”

Adding to the chaos, both teams left the ballpark late Monday evening not knowing when the game would be resumed. Baseball officials were to reconvene Tuesday morning and study their weather charts. The forecast Tuesday calls for day-long rain, high winds and temperatures in the 30s.

“We’ll stay here if we have to celebrate Thanksgiving here,” Selig quipped.

Whenever the game will be played — gobble, gobble — Selig confirmed it will start around the same 8:20, 8:30 p.m. ET national television time slot.

Logistics quickly became a huge issue, and not simply the logistics of Tampa Bay’s Joe Maddon and Philadelphia’s Charlie Manuel managing their rosters. The Rays, who were to have chartered home following the game, had checked out of their hotel. Late Monday night, they couldn’t get back in. They found rooms in Wilmington, Del., roughly 45 minutes away.

“We’re having movie night tonight,” Friedman cracked.

There they’ll stay, bunkered in, for as long as it takes. Selig said that if the weather is horrible Tuesday, then Wednesday becomes a possibility. Currently, Game 6, if necessary, is scheduled to be played Wednesday at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“It’s kind of like when you’re snowed in, you get to stay home and miss school and hang around the family,” Maddon said. “We’re snowed in right now. And the people who live in this area can relate.”

Selig, Friedman, Gillick, Rays president Matt Silverman, the umpires and head groundskeeper Mike Boekholder met before the game, knowing that rain was on the way, to discuss various possibilities.

Among the things considered in the meeting was that baseball would have a complete mess on its hands if it postponed the game. Because, at the time, the rain was light and, with Philadelphians practically foaming at the mouth in anticipation of only the second World Series title in club history and a sold-out crowd of 45,940 mostly already in the ballpark, there might have been an insurrection.

What apparently was left unclear, incredibly, given the magnitude of this game, was what would happen in the event that the playing field deteriorated to the point as the contest progressed that it would become embarrassing to baseball to continue.

Tampa Bay’s Carlos Pena promptly removed baseball officials from the griddle when he drove home B.J. Upton with the tying run in the top of the sixth. Because if he hadn’t, while the men in uniform pretty much assumed baseball wouldn’t stand for a rain-shortened game to decide the World Series, nobody seemed to know for sure.

Because according to baseball’s rules, had the top of the sixth inning ended with the Phillies holding their 2-1 lead, the Phillies would have been awarded a victory.

“You know what?” Pena said. “I really did not believe that it would be possible (for Philadelphia) to win a World Series like that. All of us were talking in the clubhouse. There’s no way that could have happened. No way. In the World Series, you play nine innings.”

Selig concurred, saying he would have seized command of the rule book at that point.

“It’s not a way to end a World Series,” Selig said. “I would not have allowed the World Series to end that way.”

Said Gillick: “I think both of us, Andrew (Friedman) and myself, we wanted to make sure that if this game was to be played, we wanted it to play to the conclusion. I wanted it played fairly, both sides, Tampa Bay and ourselves.

“We were not aware that the commissioner could, even with the score not tied, continue this game later and call a rain delay until the proper conditions did exist.”

So with an even worse weather forecast for Tuesday, Jimmie Lee Solomon, executive vice president for baseball operations, said shortly before Game 5 they would figure out a way to play.

“Unless I see animals walking two-by-two down Main Street,” he said.

The game started under a light drizzle, which soon stopped. But by the third inning a heavy rain had started, and by the fourth, the wisdom of Solomon was soaked. You could swear you saw those animals paired off and appearing all over. The field was quickly turning into a quagmire.

“What we look for as umpires is the integrity of the mound and the batter’s box,” umpire crew chief Tim Welke said. “Guys weren’t falling off the mound pitching — delivering — and the hitters weren’t slipping out of the box.”

Well, maybe it wasn’t that extreme, but …

“It was tough, especially in the third inning,” said Tampa Bay starter Scott Kazmir, who allowed two runs, four hits and six walks in four innings before giving way to reliever Grant Balfour. “I really felt no footing. I wasn’t getting any grip. Every ball you got felt like it was waterlogged.”

“I know it wasn’t good for Cole, and for the pitcher for the Devil Rays,” said catcher Carlos Ruiz, who was probably too waterlogged himself by that point to remember they’re no longer the Devil Rays, merely the Rays. “And for the hitters, too.”

Still, on they played.

“I thought it was back in Beaumont, Texas, in 1985,” Maddon said. “We played a game like that when I was with the Midland Angels. The last out was made on a rooster tail to the shortstop. So I really thought it was going to end that same way tonight.”

Evan Longoria, standing at third base, looked as if he were trapped in a flood awaiting a rescue boat. Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins made like a rooster tail chasing a pop fly in the fifth — and when he dropped it, he was charged with an error. Harsh.

Increasingly, injustice was everywhere.

“When the wind turned around and started coming in from right field is when you started to see where players had trouble catching the ball,” first-base umpire Tim Tschida said. “And now the game runs the risk of being comical. We never reached that point. And our goal all along was to stay that way.”

It certainly mudslid up to that line, though.

“Conditions were horrible,” Pena said. “It was windy, rainy, cold. But a game like this was kind of crazy. Kind of cool. It’s a great story to be a part of. Conditions were difficult.

“Looking at home plate in my last at-bat, I couldn’t even see home plate. All I could see was water.”

So then, with the Rays trailing 2-1 in the sixth, two outs and Upton at second, how exactly did he see the ball well enough to stroke a single through the raindrops into left field?

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t even know. You’re just trying to get rid of all the distractions.”

It was pure survival for Tampa Bay, and in far more ways than one.

Upton had rapped a two-out single to shortstop, another ball that, in better conditions, perhaps Rollins handles. He moved to his left to field it, but the ball kicked up into the heel of his glove and then he couldn’t find the handle to make the throw to first.

Maybe on a dry field, the ball takes a true hop, Rollins throws to first and the inning ends.

In these ludicrous conditions, the ball went splat! in the mud, then splatted off his glove, and then he couldn’t make a throw and Upton was safe.

Minutes later, Upton sloshed his way to second base for a steal. When he slid, he looked like a man in need of scuba gear.

“It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” he said. “I was worried about slowing down more than anything. I didn’t want to overslide the bag.”

“All you could see was a splash,” Pena said.

When Pena’s single sent him home from second, that was an eventful trip, too. Upton didn’t sprint so much as he hydroplaned home.

“I was tiptoeing through, telling myself to stay up and not fall down,” Upton said. “On a base hit, I knew (left fielder Pat Burrell) couldn’t charge the ball like he wanted to, and I couldn’t run like I wanted to.”

Burrell’s throw was late, Upton slid home with the tying run … and you could almost hear an audible sigh of relief from baseball’s home office.

Had it remained 2-1, Selig would have had to stick his neck on the line and, in what would have essentially been a case of making the rules up as he went along, declared that the rules that call for a rain-shortened game to become official after five innings were null and void.

As for suspending a tied game, before a 2007 rules change, baseball rules called for any game suspended while the score was tied to be replayed in its entirety.

And long ago, before a 1980 rules change, Tampa Bay’s sixth-inning run would have been taken off the board because the inning was not played to its completion. As such, the score would have reverted back to 2-1, the way it stood when the fifth inning ended.

“One of the things we’re kind of overlooking here is, the players were truly professional through this whole thing,” Tschida said. “Everyone played. No one complained about the conditions. There was no, ‘What are we doing out here?’ Which usually happens in these situations.”

As his team prepared to board that bus to Delaware, not knowing when the heck this World Series would resume, that’s what stuck with Maddon, too.

“Our guys were wonderful with how they handled the whole deal,” the Rays manager said. “I’m very proud of them. Those were the worst conditions possible. Adverse. And there was no quit.

“I love it.”

So when they next meet, the Rays and Phillies will pick up where they left off — 2-2 heading into the bottom of the sixth.

Hamels is scheduled to be the leadoff batter. Look for a pinch hitter, and don’t be surprised if Tampa Bay unleashes its secret weapon, phenom lefty David Price, for what will be a 3½-inning sprint that, ultimately, will either end in a World Series title for the Phillies or send this series back to Florida (and, probably, belatedly).

“This is part of our story,” Pena said. “Tie ballgame. It’s really exciting. This is just a perfect story.”

Or a perfect storm.

On Monday night, it was difficult to tell which.

Hookscenter.com wire report (Miller).