Posted on 04/02/2017 10:22:24 PM PDT by TBP
We need this. Need it? Around New York, when it became apparent the chill wasn’t going to abandon our bones one second earlier than required, we’ve been circling this date, pining for it, counting down toward it, from the moments last autumn when baseball expired, abandoning us at the most inopportune time.
That was the most timeless thing Bart Giamatti was talking about all those years ago, after all, when he wrote about how baseball is built to break your heart. That’s the part that still reaches into your soul for a squeeze every year:
“As soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. … You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive … and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”
Oh, yeah. We need the Yankees and the Rays at Tropicana Field on Sunday, and we need the Mets and the Braves at Citi Field on Monday. We need all 322 of the games that will follow in a way, this time, that maybe we’ve never needed them before.
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Tampa Bay beat the Yankees on Opening Night.
I hope we have good baseball weather this spring. It always seems to me, that baseball starts and ends in bad baseball weather. And that it’s a roll of the dice every year, as to whether the weather will cooperate.
Tanaka looked terrible. The kids had a bad day for teh Yankees.
Did you see the SF-Arizona game? Madison Bumgarner hit two homeruns, the only pitcher in Major League history to hit two homers on Opening Day. (I believe that he currently leads the major leagues in homers.) Despite that, Arizona came back and won the game in the ninth off SF’s new closer, mark Melancon.
The Cubs tied the Cardinals in the top of teh ninth, then teh Cards came back and won it in the bottom of the ninth.
The rest of teh teams open Monday.
In a dome, how can you tell if it’s good or bad baseball weather?
In a dome, you will always have good weather for baseball. I was referring to the stadiums which are not dome or retractable roof stadiums. Early April can have some wintry weather in many cities.
Seriously?
Baseball is the be-all and end-all of your life?
Yet another example of “Bread and Circuses”.
At the end of his essay, Giamatti addressed your valid concern:
“Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.”
God made the earth for us to enjoy, and it’s tough to remember it’s not supposed to be enjoyed for its own sake, but because of Him. For a lot of us, baseball’s one of those attachments that’ll be tough to leave behind some day. But it helps to think of it as an “illusion”, fully knowing that it is.
They could avoid this problem by just scheduling early and late season games in warm weather cities or those that have domes. For whatever reason or reasons they chose not to and thus you have snow or rain which results in cancelled games etc etc.
It will be 50 and sunny for opening day at Fenway for the Pirates Red Sox game. Don’t know why we are opening with interleague play.
The bloom is off the rose of interleague play, in my opinion.
Some match ups will always have strong local interest, such as Yankees vs. Mets, White Sox vs. Cubs, Dodgers vs. Angels, but others just aren’t a big deal to fans.
Yep they could do those things with the schedule.
Part of the problem is how the schedule has stretched out, with more and more layers of playoffs, which pushes baseball into greater chance of bad weather.
Opening Day is April 2 this year, with game 7 of the World Series scheduled for November 1.
Contrast with some dates in the past. Bob Feller pitched his opening day no hitter on April 16, 1940. Jackie Robinson made his debut on opening day, April 15, 1947. Bill Mazeroski’s walk off homer in game 7 of the World Series of 1960 was on Oct. 13, 1960.
I think that tweaking the schedule, so that the regular season started around April 20, and the World Series finished by about October 15, would take care of 90+% of weather issues for baseball.
But then, how do you squeeze multiple playoff rounds plus a 162 game season into a shorter time frame?? How do you work with the TV networks who televise the playoffs, to compress the playoff schedule??? Those issues may make change impossible.
Eventually their goal is to eliminate any distinction between the leagues.
You could see that coming when they forced the Houston Astros to move to the American League, kicking and screaming.
Next item on the agenda: Force the DH down the pieholes of us National Leaguers.
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