Why do the Red Sox, being world series champions and all have to go through the schedule they do to begin the season? I suppose that being champions has its price to pay, and major league baseball wants to expand their markets overseas, so who better then the defending champs. However, with all their travel time spent on airplanes, by the time the Red Sox get home to Boston, they're going to be mentally and physically wiped out. As many know, the redsox have began the regular season on Tuesday March 25, 2008, to begin a 2 game series against the Oakland Athletics in Japan.
Then after this long flight back to the United States, they don't even get to go home and rest. They immediately go straigt to California and play the Las Angeles Dodgers at their home field for 3 meaningless exhibition games (even though they have already started their season). Sure, they're exhibition games and they don't really count, but the starters are still going to have to play, and they'll want to fine tune their games, for when the regular season starts up again, so there really isn't any rest for them here. After those 3 games they get one day off to travel back to Fenway to play their Home Opener on April 1st which is the first of the final 2 games vs. the Oakland Athletics that they began in Japan (another sore point is that the Red Sox would have played Oakland all 4 times in Boston if the mlb didn't tell them to play overseas for 2 games).
The traveling, however, is not done. They get another day off after this series (I say day
off, but they are really travelling during these days) and then immediately travel back out of the country to go to Canada, where they play the Toronto Blue Jays for 3 games. The travelling times in and out of the country on different occaisions is just ridiculous, and sure the younger players may bounce back, however the Red Sox have many older veterans who may suffer from these trips. A few players have already sat out the games in Japan with stiff backs and sore necks. Guys like Jason Varitek will take some time to recover from the beating of travel, mixed with the beating they take playing the game, day after day.
The whole point of the trip is to introduce baseball to the Japanese culture, and to basically advertise and expand their markets. However Japan already has accepted baseball as a big part of their culture and have their own teams and leagues. The mlb is for the most part doing this for money, to expand their league into Japan, so the fans will buy American baseball jerseys, and so that players who excel in Japan can decide to join the mlb. I suppose baseball is a business, and what better team to pick to play there then the Historic, and World Series Champion Red Sox, but kudos to those players if they can take this 3 country ride in stride, and continue on to win many more games, and hopefully win another championship.
In summation, The Red Sox travel to Japan (for 2 regular season games), travel back to California (for 3 spring training games), back to Boston (for 2 games in their home opener), and then onto Canada (for 3 games vs the Blue Jays)... All in a period of under 2 weeks. Crazy!
What do you all think about this trip? It is good for business and the expansion of the MLB, but at what cost? and does the MLB really need to be expanded? Most importantly, will the Red Sox win it all again? (of course they will ;-)