Open The Roof
7 years ago
Photo Credit: Kevin Souza-USA TODAY Sports
I really wanted to make the first post I published in far-too-long-for-somebody-covering-a-team-in-the-playoffs to be about the experience of the Blue Jays’ first two ALCS home games this season, but for the umpteenth time in these last three days, I’m putting that on hold. And, believe-it-or-fucking-not, I’m doing so to talk about the weather.
The weather!
The weather, which is stunning in Toronto right now. Gorgeous. Glorious. A perfect, warm, sunny, last-kiss-of-summer type of early-mid-September day plucked and lovingly placed here on October 19th. It’s a beautiful day to be outside. A beautiful day for baseball.
And the Blue Jays, by decree of Major League Baseball, will be playing indoors this afternoon.
The league says that, because the previous two games were played indoors, they wanted to keep the conditions the same, regardless of the perfect weather outside. They could half-convincingly argue that they mean light conditions as much as anything, as playing on a field that’s half in the shadows is not exactly ideal. But the 4 PM start time itself is an MLB-created problem, thanks to their abdication of playoff scheduling to TBS, so they shouldn’t get off so easily.
And it’s not like a whoooooole lot of playoff games haven’t been played in the shadows, so let’s not focus on that and instead let’s focus on HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU POSSIBLY, ACTUALLY, LIKE, FUCKING SERIOUSLY CLOSE THE FUCKING DOME ON A DAY LIKE THIS???
I’m not a weatherman. Maybe it’ll rain and I’ll look like an asshole on this, but this is legitimately a travesty. At least… in whatever small way some minor grievance any of us has with a baseball team and league can be labeled as such. It really is horseshit, though. We swallow the excuses about the much-too-long testing period at the start of the season, we’d understand if maybe R.A. Dickey was pitching and he was determined to give his knuckleball an edge (if anyone still actually believes that’s a thing), we might even understand if MLB had said from the start of the playoffs that the roof would remain closed, like they did in the old days.
But they didn’t say that! They gave themselves the opportunity to allow the dome to open! And now no?
Huh?
Especially on a warm, beautiful day, such as today, the Rogers Centre kinda sucks with the roof closed. The heat gets contained and there’s no breeze. It’s fine, don’t get me wrong, but it’s noticeably more humid than with the lid off. Ideally, for fans, the roof would be open. Ideally, because it’s baseball, the roof would be open. Ideally, because it’s a legitimately gorgeous day, the roof would be open.
And so here the thing: just open it.
Just open the damn roof. It’s pretty simple: you look outside, you look at the forecast — is it nice? Open the roof.
Seriously, open the roof. Why be ridiculous about this, MLB? Oh, are you going to give me some bullshit about how the decision needs to be finalized early? That you can’t go back on it now? Fuck that. A human made that decision, a human can unmake that decision. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, relax, and open the roof.
It’s really nice out!
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