Starting this year, they built four extra off days into the baseball season. The Yankees have certainly needed them. Rain has followed them wherever they go, and they've incredibly already had seven games postponed by weather! Of course, when you have that many rainouts, you have to make them up by either giving up an off day or playing a doubleheader (or both).
Two of the Yankees' four scheduled games in Baltimore over the weekend were rained out, and they're going to make them up by playing a doubleheader during each of their other two series in Baltimore. One will be in August (even though the Yankees and Orioles have a mutual off day on the Thursday before the series starts). The other will be on a Monday right before the All*Star Break, when the Yankees will be coming from Toronto.
Right after the teams agreed to play the doubleheader on that date, ESPN announced that the Sunday Yankees-Blue Jays game would be featured on Sunday Night Baseball, meaning an 8:00 start time. So, ESPN wants them to play at 8:00 in Toronto, finish the game, go through customs, fly to Baltimore, and play a doubleheader at 5:00 (which means the second game will start at around 9:00). The Yankees are understandably upset about this. And they have every right to be!
ESPN offered a couple of pretty flimsy "reasons" for the change. They claimed that they wanted to use the Yankees as the lead-out from the All*Star Game selection show, which is taking the place of Baseball Tonight that night. They also said that they'd planned on this being the Sunday night game that week since December.
If that was actually the case, though, why did both teams have the start time listed as 1:00 when they released their individual schedules? And why did every media outlet in Canada go nuts about the fact that the Blue Jays were playing their first Sunday night game in 14 years? And, most of all, would the Yankees have agreed to play a doubleheader in Baltimore on Monday if they knew they were playing a Sunday night game in Toronto? Of course not!
How is this acceptable?! I'm not saying this as a Yankees fan. I'm saying this as a person with common sense. How do you expect a team to play three games in two different cities in roughly 30 hours and think it's OK?
The Yankees get screwed by having to travel after Sunday Night Baseball all the time, but this is beyond ridiculous. It's an integrity of the game issue first and foremost. You've also got to worry about the possibility key players getting injured. As Ken Singleton said during the broadcast of this afternoon's makeup game in Detroit, "tired players become injured players."
Yankees manager Aaron Boone (who, ironically, worked as a broadcaster on Sunday Night Baseball last season) summed it up pretty well: "Hopefully there is some pressure being applied because that is not good for the product on the field or the safety of our guys, having to go from night game, flight and right into a doubleheader. Anybody who would argue with that is not being truthful."
And, it's not like ESPN needs this game for the opportunity to show the Yankees. They max out the Yankees' Sunday Night Baseball appearances every year. In fact, they're scheduled to play three Sunday night games in July alone (plus one this week when they play the Mets at Citi Field). They play the Red Sox on July 1 and the Mets on July 22. Both of those, as everyone knows, are required Sunday Night Baseball matchups (in the case of Yankees-Red Sox, every time they play on the weekend, a Sunday night game is required).
This is a major issue that needs to be addressed. David Robertson, the Yankees' player rep, was immediately on the phone with the Players Association after the change was announced, and the team has been in touch with the Commissioner's Office. Obviously they'll get some push back from the Blue Jays and ESPN, but Rob Manfred has to put his foot down and do the right thing here. Because making a team--any team--play a Sunday night game before a doubleheader in another city the next day is flat out wrong.
In response, the Yankees have threatened to boycott ESPN if things aren't changed. They obviously can't prevent ESPN from showing them entirely. But they can refuse to do interviews and any other sort of promotional pieces that you regularly see on the network. And this wouldn't just apply to that Sunday night game against the Blue Jays. It would last all season.
So, ESPN is being given a choice. Do the right thing or risk pissing off one of the best teams in the game even more. Boone isn't optimistic that the right thing will be done. He's fully expecting ESPN to get its way and his team to get screwed (more than they already have).
Which is why the commissioner needs to step in. Who's more important, the players or the TV networks? We'll find out soon. And we'll find out what side Manfred's on. He'll either show the players that he's on their side with a favorable resolution. Or he'll show them that he doesn't care about them at all and make a team play three games in little more than 24 hours. Which is a ridiculous thing to even think about.
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