New York ? Even Chone Figgins couldn’t have splashed his way through this.

The white tarpaulin over the Yankee Stadium infield billowed in the wind Saturday, and a steady rain fell. More than 31â2 hours before it was scheduled to start, Game 4 of the AL playoff series between the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Yankees was postponed.

Major league baseball and the Fox network reset the game for tonight. If the Yankees win and force Game 5, that one would be Monday in Anaheim, Calif., a quick turnaround for teams fighting to gain a berth against the Chicago White Sox in the AL Championship Series.

“It’s out of our control,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. “We’ll play at midnight if they tell us to play at midnight. We’ll be ready.”

A New York victory would tie the best-of-five series 2-2, forcing the teams to fly across the country in the middle of the night. Players would not get to sleep until 5 a.m. PDT or so, about 12-14 hours before they would have to play a fifth game. A day game today would have eased the travel, but television networks prefer to have games between large-market teams in prime time.

“Is it unfair? In a sense, yes,” Yankees bench coach Joe Girardi said. “But I think we all know why we’re doing it that way, and that’s part of what makes this game tick. It’s what keeps salaries up.”

Baseball officials spoke with Fox, and Game 4, at first rescheduled for 7:15 p.m., was moved up to 6:55 p.m. Commissioner Bud Selig declined comment.

“I’ve got my hands full here,” he said before any questions could be asked.

Fox said deciding the start time “is the responsibility of MLB.”

“That said, from a national television standpoint, it is certainly a marquee matchup between two major-market teams that warrants a prime-time audience,” the network said in a statement e-mailed to the Associated Press.

Los Angeles took a 2-1 series lead with an 11-7 victory in the rain Friday night, beating up on Randy Johnson and getting another standout defensive play from Figgins, whose diving catch of Gary Sheffield’s liner to center saved one or two runs and blunted New York’s comeback from a 5-0 deficit. After the Yankees went ahead, 6-5, Anaheim rallied for two runs in the next inning, with Figgins hitting a go-ahead single.

Scioscia decided to stick with Jarrod Washburn as his Game 4 starter and leave 21-game winner Bartolo Colon for Game 5 if it’s needed.