I’d be much happier if MLB just totally lost this idea of having pre-Opening Day (or Opening Day, as bizarre as the timing was) games in Japan. After all, don’t the World Series winners/2nd place teams go over to Japan during the post-World-Series offseason to play exhibition games?

Surely that should be enough, even for Selig and Co. (but, obviously not).

Next thing we know, Bud and his Buddies will be sending a troop of 4 teams all around the world to play to our boys in Iraq, to open up new territory in Russia’s Gulag, and to tour China a la Bingo Long and the Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings, ending up with an exhibition game against the Survivor All-Stars.

I also thought it was tacky that they sold ads on the players helmets.

thus looking like a Japanese baseball team

Also, I don’t think there would have been any less interest if it wasn’t a regular season game.

I’m not proposing alternate solutions here, but noting my reaction to how the end result went. I agree with other commenters- I feel like if the choice was doing something like this or doing nothing, MLB should have done gone ahead with the season at it normally does.

- I don’t like having a single series this far early
— Propose something else that the MLPA won’t veto

- I don’t like that MLB fans here couldn’t easily watch, much less attend
— Again propse somethine else that is consitant with your ending comment where you approve of the gesture.

- I don’t like having any team’s home opener in a different city
— Agreed, they aren’t really home games. But I’m sure that the A’s got a lot more money from the game playing in Japan than a mid season game. Plus they will have a real home opener later.

- It’s crazy that they’re following real games with more spring training games
— agreed. too wierd.

- I don’t like that the two teams have to play through spring training, these games, and then go back to spring training and into the season under different roster constraints than everyone else
— agreed. This is too wierd. But I don’t have any thoughts on how to do it better yet. The only “fair” way to do it is to have all of the teams play their first 2 games abroad (which may not be a bad idea for MLB).

Maybe because I live in Australia, I’m more used to games at odd times etc, but I applaud the effort to broaden the market, even if there is a lot of room for improvement.

In regards to the comments on Jayson Stark, I think that he is a little ambitious. MLB had to prove the market. Can you imagine playing “opening day” in London to a crowd of 40,000 vs Japan with 110,000. Baby steps, I don’t even think that there is British team in the 2009 World Tournament. Also, China is a much bigger market which I’m sure it more attractive to MLB than all of Europe.

I agree with an earlier poster, that playing in europe would be better. Plus they’re, what, 5-6 hours ahead of us here in Massachusetts which would be much easier to deal with than games starting at 6 am. I thought I’d read that there was a french game called “theque” which was sort of their version of cricket and at least somewhat related to baseball.

It would involve some schedule re-rigging, and to keep things consistent you may even have to lighten the game schedule for those first few and last few days for everyone else, but it could probably be done.

I wish they’d opened the season in London.

Paris. So much better.

Or even in Brisbane, and then made to play on an Australian Rules Football field. That would have been awesome.

I did watch the game this morning live. Harden was fantastic. Arm angle reminded me of Peavy a little bit. If he is that good all year, the M’s will be fighting might hard for second.