Please, MLB, no more April baseball

PHILADELPHIA — I don’t want to overreact here, so I’ll choose my words carefully. Whoever decided that it was appropriate to play baseball in April should be resurrected from the dead, fired into the exosphere, and forced to spend eternity in orbit around the global catastrophe he created.

See that blinking light in the sky, son? He’s why we’re sitting here, in these cold plastic chairs, on this 50-degree night, watching Connor Brogdon try to find the strike zone. That is what happens to people like that.

There is no greater testament to the human mind’s ability to forget than the fact that we look forward to opening day every year. You spend two months counting down the days until baseball season returns. Your heart swells as you imagine that magical moment you slip through the turnstiles and catch that first exhilarating glimpse of green through the concourse opening. And when that moment arrives, you realize something.

In the words of a woman who walked past me in the third inning on Friday: “Holy [bleeping] [bleep], it’s cold.”

Yes. It is. It’s cold.

There are those who say that we are currently living in a post-truth world. That nothing is real. That everything is open for interpretation and up for debate. But there’s at least one thing that all of us can agree upon, regardless of age or background or political persuasion. The weather stinks in April, and it ruins everything in its midst.

It is a harsh reality learned at an early age by anybody who has done hard time in the northeastern United States. The first week of baseball practice is like “The Revenant” with cleats and sliding pants. The dirt feels like a Slip-and-Slide over rocks. The bat feels like a Sawzall cutting through concrete. Heck, if you were confronted by an actual grizzly bear, you’d think twice about swinging. April baseball practice is why piano lessons exist.

The only difference at the big league level is that the misery is much better compensated. Cold is cold. If you turned on the television on Wednesday night, you may have seen why the Phillies seem to spend every April waiting for May. Alec Bohm was bundled up like he was playing third base in Bastogne. All Trea Turner was missing was a toboggan. There was a moment when the entire infield was wearing a face scarf while the ball was in play. This wasn’t a baseball game. It was a stagecoach robbery.

If you happened to be at the game, well, that is partially your fault. The Phillies waited four hours for first pitch, finally finding a window in the radar that still looked suspiciously like a 45-degree rainstorm. Sometimes, you have to take a hint. The goal wasn’t to win a baseball game. It was to get one on the books.

It wasn’t always like this. The first baseball game in U.S. history took place on June 19, 1846. When the first recognized major professional league was formed in 1871, its season began on May 4. Five years later, the National League held its first game on April 22. Even that must have been too cold for them, because the next six seasons began the first weekend of May.

All the way up until 1891, the thought of playing a baseball game in the first half of April would have gotten you laughed out of the textile mill. In fact, it wasn’t until 1969 that Major League Baseball opened its season in the first week of April. Further proof that all of our nation’s contemporary problems can be traced back to the ’60s.

People will say that greed is to blame. And that is partially true. They start the season when they do because the profits are reliant on playing as many games as possible. The downsides of playing 162 games in less than 190 days have been well-established. The first week of the current season has seen a rash of injuries, from Marlins phenom Eury Perez to Twins dynamo Royce Lewis to Cubs ace Justin Steele. There’s no scientific evidence to suggest that the timing of the season’s start has an impact. Still, one wonders if the human body would react a little kinder with an extra month of offseason to prepare, and an extra 10 to 15 degrees of Fahrenheit once things get started.

Whatever the case, the games are far too many. The season is way too long.