Moronic League Baseball

So today is opening day for the 2012 Major League Baseball season. 29 teams are excited to start fresh and try to recover from the disappointing end to last season. The Cardinals, on the other hand, no doubt would prefer to bask in the glow of their 2011 championship for a little longer, but dems the breaks.

Naturally, fans of the 30 teams are all excited to watch their team play its first game of the season today. That's great...as long as you root for one of these teams:

• Boston Red Sox
• Detroit Tigers
• Atlanta Braves
• New York Mets
• Philadelphia Phillies
• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Washington Nationals
• Chicago Cubs
• Toronto Blue Jays
• Cleveland Indians
• Cincinnati Reds
• Los Angeles Dodgers
• San Diego Padres

You may notice a couple of interesting things about that list. One, it contains 13 teams. The last time I checked, 13 isn't equivalent to 30. In fact, it isn't even half of 30. Two, 13 is an odd number, which should be impossible. How did we get here? I'm glad you asked:

• Seattle Mariners
• Oakland Athletics

These two teams have played two games already. These games occurred March 28 and 29, and despite being home games for Oakland, were played in Tokyo. Yes, that Tokyo. Is there even a Tokyo, California? Google says no, and I'm inclined to trust Google given that it could ruin my life with all the information its been saving up on me. Anyway, these two teams played 2 regular season games in Tokyo while everyone else was stateside playing meaningless spring training games , then came back to the US and continued to play more spring training games.

As ridiculous as this does sound, I don't have a problem with how it played out. No, it's not fair to make 2 teams go through the rigors of playing games in Japan while 28 don't, but stopping teams and leagues from putting marketing over fairness isn't going to get us anywhere. And if you're going to send two teams to Japan, this is the only way to do it and not be horribly unfair about it (it's not like you can give teams consecutive off days during the season). And since no one in Oakland cares about baseball anyway, not a huge loss. Normally I'd complain about how the games weren't shown live outside of Seattle, Oakland, and Japan, but it's the Mariners and the Athletics, so that's a defensible decision.

• Miami Marlins
• St. Louis Cardinals

Miami (no, it's not the Florida Marlins anymore) is the reason the topmost list of teams playing their first game today is odd instead of even. See, Miami played the Cardinals last night, on Opening Night (which means Opening Day should really be called something different, but whatever).

So if Miami is playing today, why isn't St. Louis playing today. Aren't baseball games usually played in series of 2-4 games? Why yes, yes they are. But apparently it made more sense to have St. Louis and Miami play a 1 game series in Miami, then have Miami travel to Cincinnati for the next day and have St. Louis travel to Milwaukee for the following day.

Now Miami is breaking in a new ballpark and the Cardinals are the defending World Series champions. So why exactly are both going on the road? Did baseball forget that the Marlins have a new park, and a new name, and new uniforms? Because that's what this feels like. The schedules were made and then someone piped up "Hey, the Marlins built a new park, shouldn't we feature that on Opening err...something?" And rather than rearrange the schedule, they simply stole a Marlins-Cardinals game from the middle of the season and plopped it in front of the non-Japan games.

As for the remaining 13 teams, they simply don't start play until Friday. In fact, no one who plays on Thursday aslo plays on Friday (except for the Dodgers and Padres), which I guess makes sense, as it allows two entirely different sets of fanbases to enjoy an "Opening Day" for their team, except for the fact that, well, there's a Dodgers/Padres game that day. And the Cardinals already played. And the Mariners and Athletics. At this point, trying to figure out the logic behind what MLB is doing will only make my head explode, so I'll stop.

So why? Why wait on these 13 teams? Well, these are my best guesses.

• Chicago White Sox - So Cubs fans can have happiness for one day, where their team doesn't lose and their cross-town rivals do.
• Texas Rangers - Not enough recent success to justify Thursday inclusion.
• Minnesota Twins - MLB's attempt to delay the first Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau injuries of the season.
• Baltimore Orioles - Give Baltimore fans one extra day before they have to remember they're doomed in the AL East for another season.
• New York Yankees - MLB probably figured there aren't enough people eager to watch the Yankees to have them play on Thursday.
• Tampa Bay Rays - Making the fan base of 3500 people wait an extra day doesn't result in much of a PR hit.
• Kansas City Royals - These fans are well-conditioned to abuse.
• Anaheim Angels - No marketable stars to justify Thursday inclusion.
• Milwaukee Brewers - MLB is hoping if they wait as long as possible to thrust Ryan Braun in front of the cameras, the media will forget about his whole ridiculous successful positive drug-test defense.
• San Francisco Giants - Getting San Francisco back for the Barry Bonds era.
• Arizona Diamondbacks - See Rays, Tampa Bay
• Colorado Rockies - Peyton Manning doesn't want to share the spotlight any sooner than he has to.
• Houston Astros - No one is going to want to watch this team play. Except masochists.

What? Given the actual decisions MLB has made surrounding Opening Days, what makes my reasons any more ridiculous?