Baseball tears down Opening Day

Opening Day used to be one of the coolest things about baseball. Every April, on a lovely Monday, the season started for real with a game in Cincinnati, birthplace of professional ball. There was a parade to celebrate before the game. Later that day and the days that followed, one by one, each team would play its home opener, as spring and hope arrived.

Then, a few years ago, Major League Baseball and ESPN conspired to move the first game to Sunday night so that it could be televised at a more convenient time. So while two teams played a real game, all the others were finishing their exhibitions. Bleah.

This year is the worst abomination yet. In the name of promotion, Opening Day will take place in Tokyo, where the Yankees will play some team called Tampa (another baseball abomination). The game takes place in the middle of the night in the U.S (tonight/tomorrow morning, I think). It's going to happen 5 days before anybody else plays a real game, while the other teams are still playing exhibition games. ESPN cares so little about the game that although they're televising it, they're not even sending announcers: the crew will watch from the studio while broadcasting.

Weird. Bizarre. Stupid. Way to go, Major League Baseball!

"A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct." -- Princess Irulan

Comments

[DaveP]

I'm just going to live in denial. Opening Day will be when they start playing baseball here in Minneapolis. But that probably won't matter either, since the Twins won't be on TV. This year is shaping up to drive me away from MLB more than any year since 1994.

[Scott]

Somehow the Giants are going to televise 161 games this year -- that is, all but one. I don't care all that much, because I usually listen on the radio, but that's pretty neat. The price of this is that many Saturday homes games start at night (yuck) to avoid the anti-fan Fox exclusivity policy.

-Scott

[DaveP]

Well, the Twins are going to televise all 162, it's just that 20 will be on the low-power UHF station, and the others will be on their own network (Victory Sports) that none of the cable systems carry.