Detroit Tigers vs. Chicago White Sox: When is Opening Day 2022?

The lockout is over and it’s now official: the Detroit Tigers will play 162 games this year.

Detroit Tigers baseball is back, and it’s a welcome relief after the last few months of concern, speculation, and canceled games. But one thing about those cancellations…it turns out Major League Baseball was just kidding.

Two weeks ago MLB commissioner Rob Manfred sent a letter to fans in which he wrote “The calendar dictates that we are not going to be able to play the first two series of regular season games and those games are officially canceled.”

We used that as an excuse to argue it wasn’t such a bad thing for the Detroit Tigers to miss seven games on the West Coast to begin the season. Now we know baseball was using a heretofore unknown definition of “canceled,” and those first two series will be made up at the end of the year and through a series of nine-inning doubleheaders. But that leaves us with one outstanding question:

When is Detroit Tigers Opening Day 2022?

We’re glad you asked! The Detroit Tigers now begin their 2022 season on Friday, April 8th, at home against last year’s Central Division champs, the Chicago White Sox. Schedule hounds might point out that this was always the scheduled home opener, and they’d be right.

Now, instead of opening the year with seven games on the West Coast, including FIVE that were scheduled to begin after 9:30 PM EST, the Tigers open the year with three games against the White Sox, and three games against the Red Sox. And all but one of them is scheduled to begin shortly after 1 PM eastern.

And how fun is Opening Day going to be? It’s a Friday day game, with no COVID restrictions, in a division rivalry that got a little feisty last year. And it will likely be the official Tigers debuts for Tucker Barnhart, Javier Báez, Eduardo Rodriguez, and possibly Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson.

Get your tickets, get some popcorn, and get yourself a designated driver, because it’s gonna be one big party.