Regular Season, Anyone?

The start of this year’s baseball season has really thrown me off. I can’t be the only one, can I? So, Seattle and Oakland played a quick, 2 game series in Japan this week. The games counted for regular season standings, which is cool and all, but did they really need to play a week and a half before the rest of the league started playing meaningful games? All of the other 28 teams are in spring training mode still; they are finalizing their respective 25 man rosters, but the Mariners and A’s are returning from Japan and being confused about if they gained a day or lost a day crossing the international date line.* *Can someone please explain it to me, because I still can’t wrap my head around the international date line. The sad thing about the 2 game series is that they split the series, and neither team gets bragging rights for leading the division for more than a week. I don’t like to be critical of any baseball team this time of year, but considering the other two teams in the AL West, the Mariners and A’s won’t have much of an opportunity to lead the division. If they had played 3 games in Japan and Yeonis Cespedes led the A’s to another victory, they would already have a 1/2 game lead on the Rangers and Angels. So here we are on March 30 and the baseball season has already started, but it hasn’t “really” started. The season is “officially” kicked off when the defending World Series champion Cardinals open the new stadium in Miami against the Marlins on Wednesday. I guess what the Mariners and A’s played this week was a soft opening. Regardless, I don’t know what to think right now, and I can’t wait for teams to start playing regular season games every night. That should return my sports world to normalcy.