MLB’s scheduling ‘night’ mare

MLB COMMISSIONER Rob Manfred this week again showed that he no more gives a rat’s rectum about The Game than did “Bottom Line” Bud Selig.

Manfred again has allowed the most preposterous times and places — April games, late-Sunday nights in outdoor Northeast stadia — to remain one of his office’s sustaining marks of arrogant disregard for patrons and fans, switching scheduled Sunday afternoon games to Sunday nights as per ESPN’s purchased wishes.

The sensible might think ESPN execs and Manfred would come to the greatergood realization that paying to sit in Yankee Stadium, Citi Field and Fenway Park at 10:30 on a Sunday night in freezing weather is not something they would encourage in their friends and families. But for ours? Enjoy!

You would think Manfred at last would have — could have, should have — encouraged ESPN to choose early-season Sunday night games from San Diego, Los Angeles, Arizona and domed venues.

Why didn’t the Mets, Yankees and Red Sox play late Sunday night home games before the ESPN deal? Because they would have made no sense!

And so April’s ESPN Sunday night schedule again reads like a setup, as if the rest of MLB’s schedule came later: April 9, Marlins at Mets. April 16, Cardinals at Yanks. April 23, Nationals at Mets. April 30, Cubs at Red Sox. Let them eat Eskimo Pie!

MLB doesn’t care where teams have to play the next day or whether the quality of successive games will be diminished. It doesn’t care that Sunday-nighters eliminate kids, families and logical next-morning working folks from attending, and that they reduce the chance that more than half the country — including the two teams’ fans — will be awake after the seventh inning.

Under Manfred, Selig’s drug-addicted hooker MLB formula remains: Do anything you wish to me, Mister, as long as you pay me.