Why do baseball teams take off the Tuesday after Opening Day?

You're seven years old and the long wait has finally come to an end. You survived 11 months of a gift-less existence, minus a birthday or stray holiday gift from grandma. Now, December, with its letters to Santa, visits to his helpers at the mall, intense longing for something that makes you look like Captain America, usually hollow threats of a "naughty list" from mom and that endless final day of school before winter break is nearly in the rearview. Somehow, despite an existential crisis on Christmas Eve in which you wonder how anyone ever falls asleep and whether you ever will do so that night, you have awoken on the 25th, run down the stairs and found a Christmas tree stacked with gifts underneath. Everything you've been waiting for is right in front of you. You open that first gift and have that familiar feel of adrenaline, excitement, wonder and hope. Anything is possible. Yes, you tell yourself, that gift box is big enough for a life-size Stormtrooper costume. Could there be a surprise puppy hiding in another room? Everything is possible. Anything is real. And then, after you finish opening that first gift, your mom steps in, puts away the rest of the presents and says "Okay, we're done until the 27th."

That horror is one baseball fans experience each April. After waiting months and months for Opening Day, fans of more than half of the league's teams get their fix on Monday (or in the case of Pirates, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Rays, Mets and Royals fans, Sunday), the start of what will be a six-month, everyday marathon. But then, mysteriously and counterintuitively, there's an immediate day off before that marathon actually begins the next day. It's like the gentlemen and lady starting their engines at Daytona and taking a pit stop after the first lap. Baseball is beautiful because of its routine and familiarity. It's there every day, except for a handful of days off (which provide much needed breaks for players and fans), and that interminable 48-hour break after the opener. What gives? Why do the baseball gods put us through this?

(Photo by Mike McGinnis/Getty Images)

As the bards once lip-synced; blame it on the rain. Even though the league has watered it down in recent years, Opening Day is still a holiday for baseball fans. It's the most important start date for any sport, even the undisputed American king, the NFL. Heck, it's the only important start date. And why not? It's usually a beautiful April day that see teams go through a bunch of pomp and circumstance to celebrate the occasion, with bunting hanging on facades, someone famous throwing out the first pitch, standing ovations for returning players and stars-to-be and New Yorker contributors writing eloquently pompous Talk of the Town pieces about the metaphorical arrival of spring. Fans buy tickets to be a part of it.

For that reason, the usual weather workaround that applies to the other 161 games (postpone game, give rain-checks to fans for another day) doesn't work for Opening Day. It makes sense on its face: You don't want people who bought Opening Day tickets to miss Opening Day itself, while giving the people who bought tickets for Tuesday the lucky privilege. When you buy a ticket for Opening Day, you're buying it for "Opening Day." When you're buying a ticket to another baseball game in April, you're buying a ticket to a baseball game in April.

In all, 16 of the 30 teams in MLB have a post-opener day off. The ones that won't mostly have something in common: They were scheduled to play in rain-proof retractable-roof (or domed) stadiums: Detroit at Miami, Colorado at Arizona; San Francisco at Milwaukee and Toronto at Tampa Bay all start with back-to-backs. The Dodgers-Padres also won't do it (Southern California weather, perhaps?) nor will the White Sox-A's and Mariners-Rangers. Maybe those last two were victims of scheduling issues or a day-night doubleheader thing for Tuesday or something else entirely, like the fact that the A's Opening Day attendance will consist solely of players' wives and people who thought they were buying tickets to a Warriors game.

(Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

Aren't there any better ways though? Only a small fraction of the fanbase is attending Opening Day. Why make the rest suffer through a horrible, baseball-less Tuesday? You can please all parties: Make Opening Day whenever the actual first game is played. Then, if it rains, the Opening Day tickets are good for game No. 2 (or No.3 or whatever) and the folks with the tickets to those games get the rain checks. Perfect? Hardly! But it's better than the buffer, which is further from perfection. How many people in Cleveland and New York won't be able to take the day off again? How many dentist appointments can a parent say a child has to get them out of school for multiple Opening Days? What if it's a Molina-moving weather pattern and Tuesday's game gets called too?

Save us from this injustice, baseball. We've waited all winter. Another 24 hours is too much to ask. Unless you're a fan of the hapless Phillies - then you'll take all the days off you can get.

(Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)