MARCH 26 OPENING FOR BASEBALL WAY TOO EARLY | WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

TOO COLD. TOO MANY PULLED MUSCLES . MORE DISABLED PLAYERS AHEAD. POSTPONEMENTS AND DAY-NIGHT DOUBLE HEADERS CERTAIN

WPCNR VIEW FROM THE UPPER DECK By “Bull” Allen, March 16, 2020

Hello there, Everbody, this is “Bull” Allen greeting you from the gondola at legendary Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg Florida and I’m drinking hot coffee, instead of a Balentine Ale and puffing away on a White Owl Wallop with frozen fingers.

I have to wonder whatever happened to Florida Spring Training weather down here in the Grapefruit League. In Tampa last week, Suzyn Waldman was in her down parka broadcasting the Yankee game back to New YORK, and commenting on how the temperature was around 60 and how the wind was howling through the Pittsburgh spring training field.

What she was saying was how cold spring training has been in Florida this 2020 exhibition season.

Meanwhile, my heir apparent at the Yankee microphone, John Sterling was commenting on the number of injuries already New York players have experienced.

The cold weather in the Grapefruit League, with the exception of the Judge injury, may have something to do with that.

But, you have not seen anything yet. They are set to open the 2020 season on March 26.

Do you know where they are playing?

Here are the opening sites where games will be played from March 26: New York, Cleveland, Chicago. Milwaukee, Baltimore, Toronto(Indoor stadium), Oakland, San Diego, L.A, Seattle, Cincinnati, Tampa, Houston, Arizona. That is 7 northern sites, subject to the vagaries of late March weather.

Temperatures for afternoon games will on the Opening Day weekend, and the second week of the season will be subject to 40 and 50 degree temperatures if the northern cities are fortunate, or inclimate weather, wind, snow flurries and of course the kind of cold weather that strains pitchers’ arms (hard to get loose), freezes fans, and makes today’s overly in-shape players pull muscles on swings and the assorted tweaks, twinges and pains that cold weather brings.

In New York, I remember a snow out on April 6 many years ago. I remember snow and wet grounds postponements in the middle west. I remember reschedules of day night double headers later in the season as baseball sought to play games rained out, snowed out or colded out in the first two weeks of last season. Does baseball learn? No. They keep moving back the start of the season earlier. The dumbest owners and management in sports.

In the 1950s the baseball season never started until April 15. There was a reason for that. You could not be assured of baseball weather until at least mid April, (and all baseball teams were located above the Mason-Dixon line). The farthest south city was St. Louis. You could not be assured of baseball weather until mid-April. Now with teams in the south there is no reason to schedule games in northern cities.

If you want to start the season on March 26, in the middle of the NCAA basketball tournament hysteria, do it in the south, schedule games in Los Angeles and San Francisco (which have two teams one in each league), San Diego, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Houston, Dallas, maybe St. Louis), and have northern clubs play back to back series in the south and do a southern swing. Do not schedule any northern games. But, nooooooo. Major League baseball is stupid. They do not use the southern venues to put northern teams into climes where they can actually play the games.

Also – could we eliminate night games in March, April and early May or at least start them at twilight (5 PM), to assure some warmth in Daylight Savings Time?

By far the most compelling reason to play the most games in the southern tiers is injuries due to cold weather.

I once worked it out with baseball expanding to 32 teams, (adding Las Vegas), so baseball could play the first two weeks of the season in cities in the southern part of the country, to eliminate the horrid weather situations that exist in the northern part of the country. You simply do interleague play so northern teams play in the southpart of the country, opening in the north on April 10. I suggested it to Bud Selig in the 1990s, then the commissioner, and got a letter back from him. My letter may have been the catalyst for interleague play but sadly the schedule makers have never gotten the obvious message that the weather severely affects the health and interest of fans in the northern climates. Once you sit through a 40 degree opener in Yankee Stadium with snow flurries and winds whipping in out of the northeast, in $100 seats.