Ever tried playing baseball in the snow?
The Cleveland Indians and Seattle Mariners started a national debate when they tried this past Friday and the game was called an out before it became official.
Highlights of a snow covered field and fans building snowmen in the stands made their way all over the country, causing many prominent figures to argue for major changes in how Major League Baseball schedules its games.
To be fair, it wasn’t just that one game that sparked the outcry. The Indians and Mariners tried to make up the game by scheduling a doubleheader on Saturday. It was snowed out. They were also snowed out Sunday and Monday ““ forcing Major League Baseball to move the series between the Indians and Los Angeles Angels from Cleveland to Milwaukee (where they have a retractable roof) for all three games from Tuesday to today.
Cold weather also forced one game between the Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox to be postponed. Many northern teams played through cold weather.
One argument I’ve heard over and over again is that MLB games in April should be played only in warm-weather cities or under domes. But this is exactly what they do in college baseball. And it’s created some huge problems for the sport.
This year, the college baseball season began in January. Not April, but January ““ right in the dead of winter.
Granted, only a few teams played as early as the last weekend of January, including defending champion Oregon State. But you’ve got to look deeper ““ Oregon State didn’t play a single home game until March 8, after 17 games played either on the road or on neutral sites.
Take a political map of the U.S., and draw a line more than halfway down the country, so it goes through California to North Carolina’s northern border. Now look at Baseball America’s most recent top 25 rankings ““ 21 of the teams are south of that line, and three of the remaining four are barely above it: Wichita State, Missouri and Virginia. All 25 of the top 25 play in conferences in which most of its teams play south of that line. Oregon State is the only team well above the line, and it plays in the Pac-10, where six of the nine teams play in either California or Arizona.
This is different from every other major college sport, where teams from the Midwest, Northeast and Northwest are frequently among the nation’s best.
Of course, results this skewed would never happen in Major League Baseball, which ensures all of its teams play an equal amount of games at home and on the road, and most of the big-market teams are in the northern part of the country.
But if MLB changed its schedule to put all of its early-season games in warm-weather cities or domes, it would create a disadvantage for those teams to play mostly road games in the summer, both strategically and financially. It would hurt those teams at the end of the season during tight pennant races. In addition, most MLB teams see more fans in the summer, and the warm-weather teams would lose those potential sell-out home games.
Those people who are complaining need to remember that a year like this one doesn’t happen often ““ the previous time MLB had to move a series to a neutral site, it was because of a hurricane, not snow. And that was three years ago. Pro baseball games don’t get snowed out that often.
College baseball games, however, are a much different story, as the season starts so much earlier. Which is why so many northern teams either schedule all road games early in the season, or they don’t start the season until March, a month after most of the big-name teams to the south start.
In the Big Ten, the highest-profile baseball conference in the northern part of the country, only one team was able to schedule a home game before March 6. That team was Minnesota; they use the Metrodome before the major league season, when the Minnesota Twins use it.
Thankfully, the rules are changing beginning next year for college baseball. No team will be able to start until the Friday that falls 13 weeks before Memorial Day, which next year is Feb. 22.
That should make the playing field a bit more even between the cold-weather and warm-weather schools, which in turn, could make college baseball grow as a national sport.
Most of the major media markets in this country are to the north (Los Angeles and Houston being two exceptions), and if teams in those areas become more competitive, it’s likely that more fans would be drawn to the sport.
Despite baseball being a major sport at the professional level, college baseball doesn’t get anywhere near the attention collegiate football and basketball receive. It will take an even playing field for college baseball to rise in popularity.
And in one last defense of pro baseball, the making of the MLB schedule has to be the most complicated logistical job in sports. For those of you who want a challenge, drop the Sudoku and try scheduling 30 teams to play 162 games in 179 days with two leagues with uneven teams and divisions, and following strict traditional guidelines, such as interleague play, unbalanced schedules, playing two series a week, not having road trips of more than three series, having a day off after traveling from the West Coast to the East Coast, and making sure each team has 13 weekend home series.
It would be really tough to put all of the warm-weather and dome-stadium teams at home earlier and still make it work, even though many prominent media and baseball figures make it seem easy.
E-mail Quiñonez at gquionez@media.ucla.edu.