Thank You, Major League Baseball, For Your Scheduling Consideration

April 4, 2012; Miami, FL, USA; MLB commissioner Bud Selig in attendance before the opening day game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Miami Marlins at Marlins Ballpark. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

Dear Major League Baseball,

I felt compelled to write to you in thanks for your exceptional consideration of the fans of your fine game.

It was a treat to watch every single night as the Detroit Tigers paced their way to a division title. So satisfying was the regular season that I, for one, thought The Postseason needn’t even take place. And that’s where you, Major League Baseball, stepped up your game to help me out.

You were so in tune with my feelings that you knew the last thing I would want was to conveniently watch my team in the ALDS. What I wanted was days and days of tiebreakers, Wild Card elimination games, National League Division Series, and the Boston Red Sox in prime time, and you delivered. It would have been a great sadness to have to watch the team I followed from April through Septemer play a postseason game during normal baseballing hours.

But you knew this already, and that’s why you scheduled the first four games of the Tigers-Athletics series the way you did, avoiding start times in the ridiculous 5:08-9:06 PM local time slots. It would have been horrible to have to watch a game that started at, say, 7:07 PM. Because what would be the fun in that?

And finally, I would be remiss if I thanked you, Major League Baseball, only for the schedule and not for the timing of the announcement of the schedule. Everyone in Michigan appreciated how you waited until late Friday afternoon to annouce the 1:07 start time for Monday – lest we have time to make work arrangements to attend or otherwise view the game on television – and we were all elated to discover late last night that Game 4 would indeed begin at 5:07 PM so the Rays and Red Sox could begin at 8:37. We would have hated to miss the start of the Boston game as we finished up at the office and commuted home.

It truly was something special to experience just how much you care about the fans in Detroit. Thanks again for your consideration in this matter.

Matt Snyder