photo courtsey of Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer
The recent postponement of four scheduled games between the Cleveland Indians and Seattle Mariners due to a freakish Spring snowstorm has sparked furious debate yet again about the commencement dates, length and close of the baseball season.
Some whinge that it is greed prompting the season to start so early and that if it weren't for the greedy owners we wouldn't be seeing snowed out games in April.
Firstly I would reply by noting how eagerly most true baseball fans await their respective teams' Opening Days. Those filling the stadiums aren't clamouring to have another dozen games played down in Arizona or Florida just on the offhand chance it might be too cold or the sun might not be shining bright enough for them to want to take in the game.
Secondly who is to say Bud Selig and his Stooge Crew haven't set such an early start to the season simply out of deference to global warming? After all, if the carbon-footprinting alarmists have it right we're only another microwaved meal or short flight to the Continent away from spending the rest of our summer holidays under a palm tree in Antarctica whilst the rest of the planet turns into a desert punctuated by tsunamis and hailstorms that not even your great grandparents would have walked 20 miles to get to school under.
To those who whinge about it being "too cold" for baseball in April (players included – for the salaries they receive they should be willing to play in the bowels of hell if required,) I say baseball and its fans are getting too soft. How come in Cleveland in the middle of winter, in subzero temperatures and even blizzards grown men can paint their faces, down a few shots and spend 60 minutes worth of outdoor football bare-chested and loving it as the frostbite sets in but in Cleveland in April, just let a few inches of snow fall and they have to not only cancel games but MOVE them to a place like Milwaukee? Aren't baseball players or their fans tough enough to brave a little wind chill and flurries for the love of their sport?
There is no reason to make the baseball season start any later or end any earlier just because society has grown too soft. True, Opening Days in decades past started later in April than they do now. But that doesn't mean an early opener is to blame for the recent snowstorms in Cleveland. This is weather, people. It isn't predictable, no matter how much they pay those goofy airbrushed
If you don't believe me consider that at the start of the 1907 season, the New York Giants opened against the Phillies following a heavy snowstorm. According to this account, it wasn't even the weather to blame:
In preparation for the game, groundskeepers were forced to shovel large drifts of snow onto the outer edges of the field in foul territory. After falling behind 3-0, the disappointed fans at the Polo Grounds began hurling snowballs onto the playing field, disrupting play. As the melee progressed, chaos ensued and fans began rushing onto the field to continue the snowball fight. After being pelted, Home plate umpire Bill Klem had enough and called a forfeit in favor of the Phillies.
They didn't move the games to Milwaukee, the new Caribbean of the National League. No, they shoveled the snow drifts and carried on back in 1907.
So whilst an excess of 19,000 fans showed up to watch the Indians "host" the Angels at Milwaukee's Miller Park, the Brewers themselves had their game in Florida postponed due to rain in the 10th inning!
If baseball, its players or its fans aren't really willing to overcome, like postmen, rain, sleet or snow in order to play then the only realistic answer to climate change and baseball's inability to overcome it is to make retractable roofs mandatory on all baseball stadiums in America. That way there will be no cancellations, no postponements, no rain delays, no players sliding on puddled tarps. There will just be baseball. Without the weather.
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