PHILADELPHIA – Major League Baseball took a big chance Monday night, letting a potential championship clinching game turn into a cold, rainy and windy debacle.

The rain kept coming. The puddles kept forming. The players kept slipping.

But the teams kept playing Game 5 of the World Series.

MLB appeared to catch a big break, when Tampa Bay tied the score 2-2 in the sixth inning. Carlos Pena lined a two-out single to left, and B.J. Upton sloshed home from second base.

Moments later, the umpires called a rain delay, and it eventually became the first suspended game in World Series history.

In a suspended game, the teams resume play right from the point of the interruption.

That game could be resumed tonight; however, Philadelphia’s forecast calls for temperatures in the mid-30s with sleet, with more rain and the chance for snow on Wednesday.

“The weather (tonight) is supposed to be worse,” Bob DuPuy, MLB’s president and chief operating officer, told Fox. “It’s supposed to be colder, and it’s supposed to continue to rain and be very windy. We wanted to play (Monday) for that reason.”

The first-pitch temperature, at 8:30 p.m. EDT, was 47 degrees, with the wind blowing the flags stiff, in from left field.

At that point, at least it was dry.

Rays starter Scott Kazmir walked Jayson Werth and hit Chase Utley with a pitch.

Then, with two outs, Shane Victorino lined a two-run single to left field. A team has scored a first-inning run in all five games of this Series.

The rain started falling by the end of the third inning. It didn’t stop the rest of the night.

Trailing 2-0, the Rays had a minor breakthrough in the fourth.

Pena doubled off the right-field wall, his first hit in 15 World Series at-bats.

Evan Longoria drilled a single up the middle, his first hit in 18 Series at-bats. Pena scored, trimming the lead to 2-1.

But Rays starter Scott Kazmir had obvious trouble with his footing on the pitching mound. Rays manager Joe Maddon removed Kazmir after back-to-back walks in the fifth inning, with reliever Grant Balfour coming on to get three outs.

The ground crew repeatedly poured diamond dry on the infield.

The players and umpires were soaked. But the teams just kept on playing.

If the Rays had not scored, the Phillies might have clinched their first World Series title since 1980 in that weather.

Pena’s sixth-inning hit might have saved baseball from a level of embarrassment not seen since the 2002 All-Star Game, when the teams ran out of pitchers, prompting Commissioner Bud Selig to declare a tie.

The Rays had checked out of their Philadelphia hotel, so they were scrambling to find new accommodations during the rain delay.

But at least their season was still alive.