Home Opener Travesty/Abomination

Let this post's subject line be a clear indicator: I'm in a mood this morning. The reasons for my outrage are abundant. Here's what I'm carrying around with me right now:

We all share and generally accept the view that certain minimum weather conditions are required to support a competitive baseball game. Although there may be room for argument at the margins, no reasonable person disputes that, unlike, say, football, games can and should be called, delayed, rescheduled when the weather is serving up something outside the scope of what's acceptable.

But here's the kicker: Major League Baseball insists on scheduling games, in the first instance, in certain ballparks at certain times of year where the likelihood of unacceptable, unplayable weather is quite high. We all understand why they do this — at least in part: the owners (and players) are greedy bastards. They could shorten the season to 154 games. It wouldn't be inconsistent with the traditions of baseball. Baseball played a 154-game schedule for over 50 years. But season-shortening isn't a possibility, because the owners aren't willing to sacrifice the gate and TV revenue they get from those additional 8 games. Even keeping the schedule at 162 games, baseball could at least compress the season calendar by scheduling doubleheaders, but again, financial considerations preclude this. Admitting fans to two games for the price of one? You'd suggest less of an imposition if you called on Jerry Reinsdorf to set himself on fire.

So games must be played in early April — and postseason games in late October, because of the owners' greed. Fine. We've been living with owner greed for a long time. But now let's consider why early April games are scheduled in northern, open-air parks where the weather is most likely to prove more hospitable to the Iditarod than a baseball game. This I can't explain, unless I point my Stupid Stupid Stupid Finger at the Commissioner's Office. There are, in the American League, seven teams that play in locales demonstrably more attractive and hopeful in April than the other seven: the Rangers, Angels, Mariners, A's, Twins, Blue Jays, and Devil Rays all play their games in moderate climates, under domes or retractable roofs, or (in the case of Tampa Bay) both. Why not start the season with moderate to lengthy homestands in these teams' parks? This would carry you at least into mid-April, at which point you could mix in cities like Batimore and Kansas City that offer a greater likelihood of moderate weather than Boston, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit.

But noooooooooooooo! Baseball has to slap ballgames down in these northern parks, with thirty-degree temperatures and snow. For no frickin' apparent reason.

Which brings us to yesterday's home opener. Played (or at least started) after the grounds crew pushed away 4 to 6 inches of snow from the field, delayed twice to accommodate sudden-onset snow squalls, and finally canceled, with two outs and two strikes on the losing team in the fifth inning, and rescheduled to be played in its entirety the next day. And in the course of all this, the Indians grounds crew worked itself to exhaustion, Tribe fans sat for hours enduring bitter cold (only to be told by the umpires that their team's 4-0 lead had been wiped away, and they should come back tomorrow), and Victor Martinez — who if you hadn't noticed had been on an absolute tear to start the season — has been lost to a muscle pull directly attributable to the poor playing conditions.

Nice one, MLB. Nice one, umpires.

I don't fault Hargrove, henceforward "the Human Snow Delay," for going out there, one strike away from the game becoming "official," and stalling for time while the snow situation intensified. That's his job. I fault the umpires for failing to instruct him to get his once-beloved butt back into the dugout, so Paul Byrd (who was working on a no-hitter, by the way) would have the opportunity at least to complete the at-bat to Lopez. And I fault them for calling the game just as the storm cell cleared the area, so that — once the field was cleared — the game could have been played to its nine-inning conclusion.

To be fair, I'll admit that the Indians did gain from the weather conditions. Their four runs were all unearned, following directly from Adrian Beltre's three surely weather-related errors. And if the wheels had not come off for Byrd in the fifth, and he hadn't walked three batters, the inning might have been over and the game official before that last squall kicked up and Grover could throw down his trump card. So fine — the situation is only extremely unjust to the Indians, rather than grossly unjust.

This is Seattle's only series at Jacobs Field this year — another problem to hang on the neck of MLB's schedulers (at some later date I'll post my thoughts on the absurd unbalanced schedule) — so now the teams have to come up with 36 innings in three days, under conditions not much improved from yesterday's. Good luck figuring that out, umps. One wonders how we'll handle the catching situation with Victor out: will Garko go behind the plate? Will we have to make a roster move to call up another catcher? Who do you option to the minors? We'll need every pitcher in the bullpen, along with at least one spot starter to pitch one of the games today. I suppose it will be a position player. Ugh.

I hope the rest of the weekend plays out as follows:

*We sweep today's doubleheader, winning both games by ten or more runs.

*Jose Lopez gets plunked at least twice by Indians pitchers.

*Monday's game is canceled due to inclement weather, and the Mariners have to fly out to Cleveland on an off-day to make it up.

All of that taken together, to me, would amount to something approximating justice. It won't heal Victor's leg, but it would go a long way to closing this great, gaping hole in my soul.