Thousands of people sat around in the rain at Fenway Park Friday night, even though they stood a better chance of getting a flu shot than seeing a baseball game.

Yet while authorities are pledging to prosecute anyone suspected of price gouging for the influenza vaccine, nothing will be done about the fraud perpetrated by Major League Baseball, the Boston Red Sox and FOX on baseball fans and television viewers.

Baseball’s rope-a-dope Friday night would have made Muhammad Ali proud. The Associated Press began moving wire reports of the game’s postponement at around 7:20 p.m., then retracted them a short time later. Fox Sports New England and ESPN both reported a cancellation around 7:30 p.m., with ESPN anchor Dan Patrick saying an official announcement was expected around 7:45.

If, unlike me, you actually have a life and ignore all of those pregame shows, or if you’re addicted to Jeopardy, you tuned into FOX at 8 p.m. thinking the game might still be on. And not until after it had run about a half-dozen commercials did FOX say anything to make you think otherwise, even going so far as to say on several occasions that the Fenway field was still playable.

It wasn’t until 8:08 p.m., by my clock, that MLB’s Sandy Alderson made the “official” announcement on FOX, after the network had come back from, surprise, a commercial break.

Given the importance of the games and the fall climate in the Northeast, MLB has to do everything in its power to try to get the playoff games in on schedule. With that in mind, Alderson said that they wanted to make sure the weather pattern would hold before calling the game off.

Yet, in a press conference shown later on NESN, Alderson said baseball would need a 3 hour window to get the game in. Weather forecasts for the Boston area on Friday said the rain would get progressively heavier until after midnight. Did MLB really think the storm system would suddenly make a sharp right turn into the Atlantic Ocean or veer west toward upstate New York in the course of an hour?

Despite the wet forecast, fans knew they couldn’t risk not showing up, especially if they watched Thursday night’s NLCS game, when the Astros and Cardinals played through showers in St. Louis.

So, there they sat, their hearts no doubt sinking with every drop, hoping against hope that they would see a baseball game. One has to wonder how many times they got up to get a hot dog, beer, coffee, ponchos and other souvenirs in the 48 minutes or so between the AP moved its initial postponement story and the time it was officially announced.

To reward these fans for their patience, Major League Baseball, which somehow continues to find new and creative ways to alienate its fans, told Game 3 ticket holders that their tickets were no longer good for Game 3. They would have to exchange them for billets to Game 5, tentatively scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday.

If you were one of these fans, you left Fenway Park Friday night knowing that either there would never be a Game 5 or, if there were, you may have to miss at least part of a day of work or school to make it.

Not everybody came away empty-handed Friday night. FOX got what it wanted – a chance to dupe its audience and keep some of its advertisers happy. The fact that some of that audience might have stuck around to watch its alternative programming, a movie called See Spot Run (I didn’t watch it, but I think it was about Martha Stewart’s prison laundry detail), was a bonus.

The Red Sox got what they wanted – a chance to recoup some of the revenue they’d lose if they did get swept.

Baseball got what it wanted – a chance to line the pockets for FOX and Sox. Big business doesn’t forget small favors.

The fans, they got rained on, again.