Putting up with Old Man Winter

The recent snowouts have brought attention to Major League Baseball and the way they conduct their schedule, most notably expressed in this SI.com article by having dome teams play away to outdoor, cold-weather teams early in the season instead of the other way around.

The author makes some good points, so I'm not gonna bold/not bold him, merely chime in with my thoughts on the matter.

While seemingly common sense, structuring the schedule around the weather is more easily said than done. To start off with, the number of outdoor warm-weather cities appears to be perfectly suited, but that's if you include Oakland and San Francisco. Add domes to the mix, and you end up with 7 AL stadiums and 8 NL stadiums. Sounds perfect, right? There's 14 teams in the AL and 16 teams in the NL after all, right?

However, this past week snow fell in Atlanta and North Texas, and weather in the Bay Area has a reputation for being "iffy." (A game I attended at then-PacBell Park was the only game I've ever been too where the game was stopped for 20 minutes for a "fog delay".) Not so perfect anymore.

Also, starting the season with most of your cold-weather teams on the road and most of your warm/dome teams at home also has the unintended consequence of giving those warm-weather teams a surplus of road games in the summer months, and the cold-weather teams a surplus of road games to start the season. In a sport like baseball, where everyday coverage seems to revolve around "the chase," where "the Cardinals extended their lead to three games over the Cubs and the Red Sox closed to within 4 games of the Yankees" everyday, no team wants to start out in a hole after playing most if not all of the first month on the road. Likewise, no team wants to fall behind in the race after an extended road trip in the summer.

This kind of schedule also would have revenue impacts as it leads to a glut of home games for cold-weather teams in the summer, and a glut of home games for warm-weather teams in the spring and fall, where the Twins, Marlins, Blue Jays, Nationals, Mariners, Reds, Pirates, and Athletics will have scheduling issues with other teams ranging from everything from use of the field to parking facilities for nearby stadiums for other teams (like Seattle and Cincinnati).

Teams like the Cubs, Red Sox and Yankees will always have a loyal following, but what about the Rangers, Royals, Nationals, and Athletics?

While most baseball fans would describe themselves as "true fans" most don't go to a game every day. Most fans only go to a handful of games a year. When many teams can't fill their stadiums as it is, what will happen when more games get crammed closer together, and their fan base remains more or less constant? Say Joe Fan attends a Major League Baseball game once every two weeks. Currently, he misses maybe 6 home games between visits. If the schedule were glutted, instead of missing about 6 games, he's now missing 10-12.

Lastly, I have to add that this is all a bunch of bull. It's the weather, and it can't be controlled perfectly. We could structure the schedule all we wanted but if it rains in Atlanta and Washington, there's two games out the window right away. Somehow in April, the cold weather is "something everybody has to play through" and generally an inconvenience. In the fall, perhaps it's the magnitude of the games being played, but no one seems to mind the cold anymore.

City : Average April High/Low, Average October High/Low

New York: 61/44, 65/50
Chicago: 59/41, 64/45

Pittsburgh: 61/39, 62/42

Cleveland: 57/38, 61/44

St. Louis: 67/46, 69/48

Detroit: 58/37, 62/41

So is it colder in April than October? Yes.

Is it NOTICEABLY colder? I don't think so. If you can notice the difference between a 61 degree day and a 57 degree day, my apologies to my insensitivity.

If it's THAT cold that we can't play baseball, then let's bundle up the works right here and play doubleheaders every day from May to August, and have the playoffs wrapped by Labor Day. Better yet, we can retrofit Fenway Park, PNC Park, and Wrigley Field with retractable domes so that there won't be a glut of games later on.

Or we can just suck it up and play ball.