| Re: Baseball Domes
I think retractable domes are the way to go.
Baseball is MUCH better outdoors. But there are too many rainouts and weather-related delays as it is right now, which cause many problems, including:
1. The scheduled starting pitchers having to pitch on an extra day's rest instead of the normal 4 days. This can throw them off their rhythm and hurt their effectiveness.
2. Teams calling off games when there are a rash of injuries, to give the team a day to rest (the Yankees are notorious for this).
Along similar lines, in the 2004 ALCS, the Red Sox had Pedro Martinez scheduled to start game 6 at Yankee Stadium, in the middle of the whole "The Yankees are my daddy" thing. There was a light drizzle before Game 5 started, and the Red Sox called a very questionable rainout, so that Pedro could pitch at Fenway in Game 5, instead of at Yankee Stadium for Game 6.
3. If it's the last time two teams are scheduled to play each other, you run into weird situations where they have to find a common off-day, and a team may have to travel long distances just to make up that lost game.
For example, let's say the last meeting between the Yankees and A's gets rained out. And the only common off-day between the two teams is in the middle of homestands for both the A's and Yankees. Oakland would have to fly to New York, play one game, and then fly back tothe West Coast to play again the next day. A situation like that would really suck for the A's.
And it's possible, if the rainout is late in the season, that the two teams don't have a common day off the rest of the year.
There are lots of other problems too, but those are just the first ones that come to mind |