Athletics And Mariners Split Season-Opening Series In Japan

He must be worth the hype now, right?

Why, just yesterday Jeff Sullivan over-analyzed Yoenis Cespedes’ major league debut. With GIFs!

What follows is going to be very poorly written because I was one of the people on the West Coast to wake up at 3am for live season-opening baseball. Please be forgiving, and I promise I’ll try to be better starting tomorrow not tomorrow because the next baseball game in Japan is an hour earlier than the first one was. I can’t tell if that’s a step in the right direction or a step in the wrong direction. That is the no-man’s land of the night.

Now, with the regular-season opener behind us, Cespedes has one game of major league experience. It’s not fair to scout a player based on one game, especially when it’s his first meaningful game in a new country at the highest level of competition, but it’s also not fair to scout a player based on a few minutes of YouTube footage, so the way I figure, if we can do one, we can do the other! What you’re going to see are .gifs of every single pitch that Yoenis Cespedes saw on Wednesday. There will be no .gifs of him playing defense because I don’t recall him doing anything noteworthy on defense. He’s probably a fine defender.

Happy Opening Day, baseball fans!

Oh, you thought it was an exhibition or that people were joking on your Twitter feed? No, it was a real major league baseball game that counts. Well, not in the way the All-Star Game counts, but in the real way games count. In the standings. And there will be another game tomorrow between the same two teams. Then the A’s and Mariners will fly home to the states and continue with spring-training games that don’t count. On April 6, the A’s and Mariners will meet again, this time in Oakland, to start the 160-game-North-American-based portions of their schedules.

It’s Opening Day! Pomp and/or circumstance! Pageantry! Festivities! More importantly, baseball. With an event this important, I figured it was perfect for live-blogging. Here goes:

2:59 a.m.

Only a couple of hours sleep, but the hammock isn’t electric and the cot isn’t springy with regrets, hello to the unbeds of the world, hope this isn’t infected, and stop. Oh, hey, is that coffee?

While maybe you could quibble with the selection of teams, holding the opening series in Japan is a great gesture by Major League Baseball, and it serves to underscore the globalization of the game. Tom Verducci tackles it well. He writes:

About that disrupted routine, though. I’ve seen it posited that their extended trips to Japan could have negative consequences for the Mariners and A’s going forward. It would have to do with jet lag and getting caught up and re-adjusting and everything. Is it possible that the teams are in for some turbulence in the weeks ahead after they return to the States? Even more turbulence than you’d expect the Mariners and A’s to face, I mean?

↵↵There’s so much more, both in Part 1 and Part 2, as we gear up for Opening Morning in Japan, courtesy of Boeing and Gloops.

↵

Baseball is a sport that allows tradition-junkies to mainline that sticky, tar-like tradition right out in the open. No fear of censure. It’s like what 17-year-olds think Amsterdam is, but with tradition. And we’re okay with this.

Via the San Francisco Business Times, we learn of the next pending crisis that will make the traditionalists twitch: