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Posts: 50
02/10/11 12:19 PM
I was about to credit Bud Selig with some good sense regarding the new schedule. Then I remembered it was Bud Selig, and double-checked myself. I was originally going to say that starting the season on a weekend made some sense in allowing for maximum attendance to open the season -- but Opening Day is usually sold out already in many venues, so you'd only be increasing the number of disappointed fans who want tickets but can't get them. And ceding the weekend to football doesn't seem so smart to me, either. The teams playing out the string would still be playing Sunday games and losing attendance: they just wouldn't be losing attendance for the last game of the season. I don't think there's some untapped market of people who will come out to watch the last home game of the year regardless of how well the team is doing. Remember the infamous end to the New York Yankees' 1966 season: finishing dead last for the first time since Taft Administration, their last home game drew 413 fans, for the team that two years before had been the ultimate dynasty. All this adds up to is a retreat from football, a yielding of primacy that rubs me the wrong way.And given the state of labor relations in the NFL, there might not be football to compete with next autumn.Starting the playoffs on the weekend, though, is probably a good idea (though it carries with it the continuation of starting the World Series in mid-week, I assume, so it's not that good).And to give you an idea of the way things used to be, the 1908 baseball season began on a Tuesday, and the last scheduled game was played on a Thursday. (The fabled Giants-Cubs replay of the Merkle game was the same day, but there was an actual scheduled, non-makeup game in the American League as well.) Interesting question for trivia buffs and/or baseball obsessives: when did baseball settle into its begin on a Monday, end on a Sunday routine?
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