Boston and Oakland kicked off the 2008 MLB season in Japan last week. Washington opened the baseball season in the States against Atlanta at their brand new ballpark Sunday with a dramatic 9th inning homerun by Ryan Zimmerman.

The remaining teams were scheduled to open their season Monday, however, due to weather, several teams weren’t able to begin their season as scheduled.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t envy the schedule makers in baseball. I know they have a very tough job, but they need to get some common sense and stop scheduling teams in cold weather cities to play at home during the first week of the season.

It seems like every year some team in the north opens a season at home against a team from the south or a team with a stadium with a dome.

Just look at this year’s schedule.

Milwaukee opens at Chicago Cubs. Toronto opens at New York Yankees. Arizona opens at Cincinnati. All three games were delayed because of rain. And all three road teams have a home stadium with a dome on it.

It just seems logical that if you flip the games, you wouldn’t run into as many problems.

Don’t get me wrong; as a Brewers fan I would rather end the regular season at home against the Cubs instead of having Milwaukee play at Chicago when possible playoff implications could be on the line for both teams. But I’m getting sick of early season games getting postponed because the schedulers keep making this mistake.

Last season, the Cleveland Indians lost four home games because the powers-that-be decided it was a better idea for them to open at home during the first week instead of on the road. Their entire first series versus Seattle was canceled because of snow, and to avoid any more cancellations Cleveland was forced to move its next series against the Angels to Milwaukee to ensure they could actually play a game.

Because of early season cancellations, the Indians were required to play 23 straight days during the stretch run while competing for the division title. They also played a “home” game in Seattle.

While I realize what happened last season in Cleveland was an extreme situation and nothing anyone could have predicted, it all could have been avoided if Cleveland was scheduled to play that series against Seattle in Seattle where they too have a dome on their stadium.

By continuing to schedule games early on in the season in cold weather cities where there is no dome, schedule makers are not only putting teams at a disadvantage, but they are also taking the excitement out of the start of the season.

Yankees and Blue Jays fans have to wait until today to see their teams start their season. The Reds and Diamondbacks had to wait over an hour to take the field. The Brewers and Cubs were twice delayed by rain, and while both starting pitchers came back, had the second rain delay lasted any longer, both Lou Pinella and Ned Yost would probably be forced to ask their bullpen to cover six innings to start the season.

I realize the schedulers add extra off days in April to try to help should games be delayed by rain or snow, but they could make things easier by taking advantage of the stadiums with domes by having them open the season.

However, if they insist on continuing to open the season in cold weather cities, then they should delay the start of the season by a week in an effort to miss the weather.

I don’t care what the schedule makers do as long as they do something to fix this problem that takes away some of the excitement of opening day every year. 

Greg is a senior majoring in communication arts. Let him know how you would schedule MLB if you were in control at [email protected].