Major League Baseball Needs Some Common Sense During Opening Week Scheduling

Fourteen. I count 14 teams in Major League Baseball that either are in ‘warm weather’ cities of have a dome. Tampa Bay Rays, Toronto Blue Jays, Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Angels, Seattle Mariners, Oakland Athletics, Miami Marlins, Atlanta Braves, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants and the Arizona Diamondbacks seem to all fall in one of those two categories. I’m not a master at weather based geography, but I think I’m right.

Why do I bring this up? It’s because I’m already going to rag on the MLB and their Opening Day/Week schedule. There is nothing more anticlimactic than having Opening Day on Monday and then having an off-day on Tuesday. Let’s face it, baseball barely gets a foothold in America except for two times in the year: Opening Day and the World Series.

I understand the need for these off-days when you play in possible icy weather, but put the off-day at the end of the series at least. Number the games for the Opening Series Game One, Game Two and Game Three and if the Opening Day is canceled for someday, well, then you have the ticket to Game One tomorrow. It’s a little unfortunate for some, but it makes baseball come in with a better, bigger splash, because let’s face it, the Opening Series crap in Australia or somewhere in Asia is just what it is, crap.

You know what else takes the spark out of the opening stages of the season? All of these day games. It’s ridiculous, I know that when playing in cold cities you want to play in the hottest part of the day, but the MLB is cutting out a tremendous part of their audience. A whole lot of baseball fans won’t be able to watch live any of the opening week because they work or are at school during daylight hours.

Throw the majority of series in the homes of those fourteen teams I listed in the first paragraph, your chances of weathering out any games are much slimmer, plus you can actually play the games when teams can get eyeballs. It seems so simple to me.

Every MLB asks to open on the road, but I’d suspect the MLB doesn’t have to grant their wishes. Opening Day might be a little more depressing at Tropicana than a PNC Park, but at least we can just full bore into baseball.

Replay this year, hopefully some common sense scheduling next year.