Happy Opening Day! Fuck Whoever Decided To Have Cleveland Open On The Road At 10:05 PM
Ahhh, Opening Day. I don't care if you're 4, 14, 24, 40, or 84....there's something special about Opening Day. And whether you're a diehard fan that lives and breathes with every pitch for the entire 162 game season, or if you're just a casual fan that just keeps up with the standings and/or playoffs, or even if you don't like baseball at all, you still wear your teams gear on Opening Day and pretend to be fired up. It's a Father / Son Day. It's a Hot Dog Day. Guys, it's......Opening Day.
....and the schedule makers completely ruined it for the hardworking people of Cleveland, Ohio.
What the fuck? I know I've said it before, but the MLB should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for the oversight (or worse, lack of care) they put into making the Opening Day schedule. Making Ohioans stay up until 10:05 pm to watch just the FIRST PITCH of Opening Day is criminal, and it completely wipes out the idea of kids being able to watch the ballgame with their dads. It's a damn shame that Manfred is trying to grow the game, and on the first day of the season, he gets a bunch of 7-12 year olds hating him because he made the game so late that they can't watch it. And am I crazy or is this not easily fixed? I'm not sure if Major League Baseball knows this, but there's something called Time Zones in the United States of America. They look like this:
First of all, why can't we just play teams in our own time zones on Opening Day? Second of all, why can't we all just play teams within one time zone of ours on Opening Day? Third of all, if you really can't make that work with the schedule......why can't the teams traveling go West to East instead of East to West? The fact of the matter is that if Oakland played AT Cleveland today, it could be a 4:05 start in Ohio....and no one would question the afternoon start on the West Coast. Or even if we played at 7:05 in Cleveland, it'd be a nice 4:05 start for Oakland. But fourth, and most importantly, WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE AN EAST COAST TRAVELING TO WEST COAST GAME AND AT NIGHT????? That combination should be criminal.
Give me a piece of paper, a pencil, and Iike twenty minutes, and I guarantee you I can match it up where no one is going multiple time zones away on the first weekend of the season. Or.....if I can't, I'd simply say, okay Oakland you're going to start at 4:05 pm for Day 1, so Clevelanders can watch their team, too.
And not only did the MLB fuck Cleveland on their Opening Day, they fucked them 10x before they even come home. We play an MLB worst 10 games before our home opener, with the first two being on the West Coast at the As and Mariners, then we head to Minnesota, all before finally getting to host. The season will be half over before the kids of northeast Ohio get to watch a game!
And you can say the reason we play on the road so much to start is because it's cold in Cleveland, but I'm sitting here in the office where it's cold as balls in Chicago in March too, and these White Sox fans are gearing up for their HOME GAME today. No, this has nothing to do with anything other than the world being out to get Cleveland, like usual.
Happy Bieber Day, to those who celebrate.