Will the Scheduling Geniuses at MLB Please Stand Up?

Madison Bumgarner and Jake Arrieta will face off tonight in one of the postseason’s most anticipated matchups… at 9:30 PM EDT. Is MLB serious?

Tonight, one of the biggest and best pitching matchups of the MLB postseason will be taking place on the Bay in California. It is a do-or-die game for the San Francisco Giants who are trailing 2-0 in a best-of-five series against the Chicago Cubs. They have the best postseason pitcher of this era on the mound for them in Madison Bumgarner against Jake Arrieta in a match made in baseball heaven.

So, now I notice that the first pitch isn’t being thrown until 9:30 PM here on the East Coast. And I’m scrambling around to see if I have enough caffeine in the house so I can be awake for even the first pitch. Let alone the eighth and ninth innings when there’s bound to be a crush of pitching changes and commercials to wade through. I already know – it’s no contest. And I’m gonna miss this game.

Now, look, I’m fully aware of the population shift that has taken place in this country and the Southwest states rule over the Northeast. But we’ve still got a good chunk of the population living here. And beyond that, we have the largest portion of the “baseball population” living here in cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

So what were the suits at MLB thinking when they scheduled this game? And more important for them I guess is what will they think tomorrow morning when they check on the ratings for the game, only to find out it was one of the worst ever in the history of the baseball playoffs?

And by the way, how many parents are going to let their kids stay up until midnight to watch this game? Or did the suits also forget that it was the playoffs and World Series that turned a previous generation of Americans on to baseball? And that those fans, like myself, are still loyal followers. Maybe MLB missed that.