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Major League baseball could not have screwed up Opening Day any worse if they had held a contest for ideas on how to screw up Opening Day.

How's this for an idea, baseball honchos and assorted used car salesmen? Let's open up our season, at 6am, on a Wednesday, in another continent with the World Champions? Then let's arrange for said World Champions to fly home from Japan have a couple of more exhibition games in Los Angeles(at least it was for charity,) then schedule a single, stand alone, nationally televised game on a Sunday night. But let's have the showcase Sunday night ESPN game be a one game "series" between two also-rans and have the rest of the league open Monday???

What happened to the Cincinnati Reds only opener on an April, not March, Monday? This was a tradition that worked, for what was then America's pastime, for all but two years between 1876 and 1989. Instead, today, there are not just a slew of other games scheduled, some at night, but there are games scheduled to start in Detroit and the Bronx an hour earlier than Cincinnati pushing the Reds all the way back from their traditional first home opener slot to 5th after Japan's Red Sox, Washington's Nationals, as well as, the Tigers and the Yankees.

Of course, this Opening Day stupidity is just part of a litany of anti-fan things done by Major League baseball in recent years. If you have any doubts, try using mlb.tv someday, it makes the your local Department of Motor Vehicles seem friendly and efficient. Fortunately, baseball's customer service reps are only slightly less responsive than the average tech company who has outsourced the back office to a non-English speaking place in Central Asia. They care not at all. It is all about the money. Ask the 1994 World Series.

Labels: baseball, sports