So Friday was the Indians Home Opener. Of course, it was in July because of the ongoing pandemic, which has truncated not just baseball but pretty much every professional sport league that I have even the vaguest interest in. MLB cancelled in the middle of
spring training. The
2020 season is scheduled to go only 60 games after wrangling between the union and the owners eliminated the possibility of a 100 game season. That wrangling probably also set the ground for a strike when the current labor agreement ends, but that's a problem for another year.
The A's are actually supposed to be good this year, so of course they'll play a 60 game season that will make it much more likely that a subpar team will have a hot streak at the right time instead of the best teams rising to the top - see last year's
champion Nationals, who were 27-33 after 60 last year. Frankly, even as much as I love baseball I'm not sure 60 games is worth the hassle, and as I write this two games have already been canceled because of players testing positive for coronavirus so we'll see if we actually make to the playoffs.
Of course, nobody actually gets to go to the games. Even the great
John Adams was not allowed in the home opener, making it the first one he had missed since he was 4 years old in 1955. Apparently they recorded his drum for playback, although he said the sound guy doesn't have the timing quite right.
As such, M and I watched the game on TV. That doesn't count, or else
2010 would count. Oh well. It was a good game, well pitched and tense right down to the end of the game when the tying run struck out to end
the hopes of the Royals. You could hear Cleveland Rocks over the TV, and they broadcast the Hot Dog race (Onion won, to M's satisfaction).
The upshot is that barring something very unexpected this will be the first season I didn't go to a game since... 1997? I don't think I've missed a year since 1998. It's extra frustrating because this year I had expanded my season ticket package to 15 games, plus I'd bought the home opener and a friend had given me a +1 for when the A's were in town, so that would have been 17 right off the bat. And I was thinking of going to Texas for the new
Rangers park that opened. Alas. Another time.