Why Red Sox season is starting in March, not April
An Opening Day rarity could become commonplace.
The Red Sox will do something on Opening Day in 2018 that the historic ball club has only done three times before in 118 years: play a regular season game in March.
Unlike those other instances, the March start could be more permanent this time around because it’s the tangible impact of the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement between players and owners.
Baseball’s expansion into March is derived from the historic challenges of the season’s relentless drive through game after game. In the past, teams would play a night game, followed by travel through multiple time zones, followed by a day game in another city the next day.
It was grueling, adding to the already difficult grind of the 162-game season. Players have described scenarios where they check into a hotel at 6 a.m. only to require a 10 a.m. wakeup call. Performing at the highest level becomes predictably more difficult in those situations.
To help rectify the problem, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the ownership group agreed to expand the total length of the regular season.
The latest Collective Bargaining Agreement from Dec. 2016 stipulated, “Beginning in 2018, each championship season will not be scheduled over a period of less than 182 days or more than 187 days.”
This was up from the previous range (178-183 days), meaning four additional rest days were attached to a team’s schedule. Other rules were added to provide specific requirements in terms of start times following night games which included subsuquent travel.
Since it’s unlikely that the players will relinquish these new rules at the the next CBA negotiation (which expires in 2021), it could mean that April openers become the exception, rather than the other way around.
Previous examples of the Red Sox season getting underway in March included 2003 and 2014, when the first week of April simply offered a Monday March 31st opening date.
The only other example (and what remains the earliest Red Sox opener ever) came on March 25, 2008, when Boston and Oakland opened the year with a two-game series in Japan. The extensive travel time to even get back to California (where the remaining two games of the series was concluded) required five days, thus necessitating the earlier start.
Prior to that, there are no modern examples of March regular season baseball in Red Sox history. While there were multiple April 1st openers in the ’90s, preceding decades stretched farther away from a March opener. In the ’40s, for example, the earliest Opening Day came on April 15, 1942. Of course, that was still in the era of 152-game seasons, and Boston also played a remarkable 29 doubleheaders.
