The Major League Baseball season started on Sunday with three games, but I’m a little confused if that was considered opening day or not. It seems as though it’s open to your interpretation, but I’m not sure if the fans, the experts and the reporters should be allowed to make that choice. It use to be very simple; there was a parade in Cincinnati and the Reds played the first game of the season. It was also a school holiday ion Cincinnati; which I’m sure the kids miss. So we had the three games on Sunday and then I saw an article about a writers take from opening day and all he talked about was the Monday games. Now it was the first game of the season on Monday for the teams that where playing; so it was their opening day, but it wasn’t baseballs opening day like this writer said it was. Now the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers game got delayed; so they didn’t start the season until Tuesday and while that was opening day for those teams no one implied that it was the opening day of the season. I was always under the impression that opening day was the day that the first games of the season was played. Now maybe it’s just me being picky about the wording they use for this, but it bothered me that they where trying to stretch out opening day to try to make it seem special. Now this isn’t necessary as a teams first home game is always special no matter if it’s played on the first day of the season or if they have to wait a day to get started. As you know I’m not a professional reporter or a television personality, but it almost seems like they’re trying to get something past you by trying to describe everything as opening day. Maybe this is just another situation where it’s just me.
Now I’ve been under the weather this week and I’ve been having trouble sleeping; so I’m up in the middle of the night trying to find something to watch on television. Naturally I gravitate to the sports channels and since baseball started I look for baseball highlights. Now what would’ve technically been early Tuesday morning I was watching some highlights and the game with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the Oakland A’s came up. Now I get it this isn’t a marquee game; so I didn’t expect a ton of highlights. Now this was a game that the A’s won 4-2, but the highlight they chose to show was a Mike Trout home run. Interestingly in the game Khris Davis of Oakland hit two home runs, but I didn’t get to see either of them in the highlight package. I only found out Davis hit two home runs when I looked at the box score. This make absolutely no sense to me at all. I understand that everyone loves Mike Trout and they’ll be looking for ways to give him the M.V.P. award no matter what kind of a season anyone else in the American League has, but really you couldn’t mention a player who hit two home runs. When you think about it; it’s kind of sad. It seems as though networks will push their own agenda over showing what went on in a baseball game. Now I’ve said this and have wrote this a million times Mike Trout is the best player on baseball, but he wasn’t the M.V.P. last season. Trout had a very good 2016, but it wasn’t better than the season Mookie Betts or Jose Altuve had and both of their teams made the playoffs. Now how many times have you heard someone dissuade a great season a player is having because he’s on a losing team. I guarantee that you didn’t hear that one time last season even though the Angels where under .500 and nowhere close to being a playoff team. In a sense it cheapens the game of baseball, but sadly this is another one of those situations where I’m the only one on this bandwagon and I just don’t have the platform to get my point across. Even if I did I’m sure they would just make up another sabermetric stat to disprove me.
We’ve already had two games cancelled today. The White Sox and the Tigers are cancelled for the second time in their three game series and the other Chicago team the Cubs have been cancelled as well. The Cubs where suppose to wrap up a three game series against the St, Louis Cardinals this afternoon. The Kansas City Royals at the New York Yankees is the only game now with a Noon start time; so we’ll have to wait and see if they get all of the night games in.
With the NBA season winding down it looks like there could be up to four teams with an under .500 record that will make the playoffs. It appears as though the final two teams that get into the playoffs from the Eastern Conference will be under .500 and the final team in the Western Conference will be under .500. There is an outside chance that the 6th seed in the Eastern Conference will be an under .500 as well. The Atlanta Hawks are currently that 6th seed and they’re 39-38 on the season; so it will be close.
Does it bother you to see teams with losing records make the playoffs? I don’t have too much of an issue with this as the first round of the NBA playoffs is pretty much a joke anyway. When was the last time we saw a first round upset that wasn’t a 5th seed beating a 4th seed. It’s not the ideal situation when these type of teams make the playoffs, but in the scheme of the playoffs does it matter? I think the bigger problem with the NBA playoff is the fact that all of these series are now seven games.
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