Sometimes people write things that make me feel like they're just not paying attention. It's even weirder when those people are paid to pay attention. I saw this article on a Tampa newspaper site which contained the following line:

"Memo to Major League Baseball: The defending American League champions deserve to celebrate opening day in their home ballpark."

This is written as if it's some kind of tradition to honor league champs in the following year's schedule. And that the Rays got snubbed. I didn't need to look it up, but I did just to get the exact numbers, and found that nine of the last 14 AL champs have opened the following season on the road. Do the Rays deserve to open at home? No. They, like everybody else, deserve to open at home roughly half the time, with southern teams maybe playing a little more often at home in cold weather months. The schedule-makers don't go out of their way to do something stupid, like have a solid month of games in Cleveland in April, but then again, doing what seems like the cool or "deserved" thing can never trump the fairness of the schedule. It's as if every year people look at the schedule like it's the first one they've ever seen. They should realize it's never gonna look exactly like they want it to.

That was yesterday. Then today on Joy of Sox, Allan noted a similar thing from ProJo, where Joe MacDonald acts like the schedule-makers are idiots for letting the Red Sox open at home. Like Allan said, bad weather could happen any time. There's usually an off-day after Opening Day for just that reason. The Red Sox should be allowed to open at home sometimes. This year, they do, they have the off-day after, and look, it works, as we move the game to the off-day. No problem. We get to see our team open at home for the fourth time since I was fourteen years old. (I'm now 33.) And Joe MacDonald complains about it as if he's the first to think of how it's sometimes rainy in April....

Another trend that has kind of died down is criticizing the exact positioning of the six Sox-Yanks series. As long as all six are there, and they don't play two series in a row, whatever they wanna do is fine with me. I'm not gonna complain because I feel like it would be cool if they played on July 4th. They're just trying to make it fair for all teams every year. It's a tough job. Google Henry and Holly Stephenson. I just did some searching, and came up with even more articles saying things like "boo the schedule maker." It just seems so high and mighty to do that. What if the Red Sox played on the road the first week and at home the second, and it snowed all week long? Would these people be less pissed? How about we just move all the teams to the south, and lay the season only in June? And every team can win every game, too.

And another thing! When are people going to realize that March is always 31 days long? Last year it was "oh, these Japan games are too early--I can't get into baseball yet." This year it's "I've had enough of these craaaazy spring training games, please let real baseball start!" It's like the first snow, when everybody forgets how to drive in it, as if it's never snowed before. I don't know, maybe I've just been doing this too long, but I always know exactly when the season's gonna start each year well ahead of time and I base my anticipation level on that. Of course, I'm always anxious for it to start, but it's almost like people forget that the season isn't gonna just start prematurely (or late) because they reeeeally want it to, or that's what it "feels" like will happen. Anyway, 3.5 hours till game one. Right on time. Except for the rain-out.