The baseball season begins Tuesday - sort of.
You know, that big battle in Japan between the defending Central League champion Boston Red Sox and Pacific League power Oakland A’s?
Maybe you’re not feeling the buzz. That’s OK, no one else is, either.
In a season in which Major League baseball needs a strong opening day more than perhaps any year in recent memory, Commissioner Bud Selig decides to start regular-season play in Japan. Not that there’s anything wrong with Japan - baseball has a long history in Japan, and it might be more popular there than it is here.
But starting the MLB regular season - 1. Before the NCAA Tournament regional semifinals and 2. Overseas - is further illustration that the powers-that-be of MLB just don’t get it.
Ignore the steroid problem until the government basically makes you do something about it, then ignore the fact that the Mitchell Report and Barry Bonds’ perjury case have given the sport its biggest black eye since the 1995 strike. Then again, there’s still no salary cap and the MLB Players’ Union still cares more about how much money it can bleed from the fan than actually trying to keep or add to the fan base, so the players don’t seem to get it, either.
Does anyone at MLB remember last year, when games played the first week in April had to be postponed or moved because of cold and snow in some cities. No, that won’t be an issue in Japan, but why, while some teams are still playing spring training games, does this goodwill visit to Japan have to be a regular-season contest?
Are the Japanese fans really going to care whether the A’s can take an early lead on the Mariners, Angels and Rangers in the American League West with a win? Would people in Japan who would otherwise pay to see David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez swing a bat decide to skip the game if it were an exhibition because Ortiz and Ramirez would only get two at bats rather than four?
MLB has an opportunity to capitalize on a hot spot in the global market, one where people really care about baseball, and the idea of playing a game in Japan is a good one - unlike the NFL’s brilliant plan of making two teams lose a home game and travel to London in the middle of the season, a place where they love football, but not the kind you catch with your hands.
Had the game just been en exhibition, Selig could have dictated that the teams start their every-day lineups and No. 1 pitchers and leave each in for at least five innings to make it feel like a real game. Maybe to make it more “important,” Selig could have decreed that whichever team won the first game got home-field-advantage on April 1 and 2, when the teams finish their four-game series in Oakland. That, by the way, is after the Red Sox play a three-game series of EXHIBITION in L.A. against the Dodgers.
HUH?
Hopefully the fans at the L.A. Coliseum will be excited to see Julian Tavarez and Bryan Corey when Hideki Okajima and Josh Beckett are on the 15-day disabled list with a bad case of jet lag after Boston’s whirlwind tour. Think the Yankees are the slightest bit gleeful that MLB is treating the Red Sox like the Harlem Globetrotters this spring?
Speaking of which, what’s going to happen if the Red Sox and Yankees both don’t make the playoffs this year, will MLB schedule a series of exhibition games between the two in the middle of the AL Championship Series to remind us all what a great rivalry the two teams have?
When it comes to bad decisions, poor judgment or terrible ideas, nothing that comes from Selig’s office is a surprise anymore. The only thing surprise is that despite its own best efforts, Major League Baseball hasn’t destroyed itself.
Despite every controversy and head-scratching decision that comes down the pike in March and April, the fans will be there in June and July. How many of them there are will be perhaps the most interesting story of the season.