Dear Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig,

Listen up, dude. I'm going make this real clear from all of us baseball traditionalists:

This Opening Day in Japan bit straight up sucks pond water.

Baseball is America's Pastime, right? Right. Therefore, Opening Day should take place in America. Where Americans can enjoy their sport and watch their team play without having to get up at 6:05am EST/3:05am PST to watch the first pitch of the season. (Yup, nothing says "baseball season is here!" like sipping on a cold one just before woofing down a bran muffin for breakfast.)

Seriously, this isn't meant to be xenophobic. I've got nothing against the Japanese. I know the Japanese love baseball. In fact, one of my baseball dreams is to attend a baseball in Japan some day. But that's beside the point.

I get where you're going with this, too. I know you want to bring an international interest to the game and perhaps one day have a team from Japan join MLB as a franchise. And that's cool. But let's be real. Any body with two cents for a brain knows that logistically that's a near impossibility given the great distances between the two countries. And let's not even address the brutal jet lag and effect on player performance. (Can't you just see Derek Jeter yawning and tryign to shake off the cobwebs at SS after just getting in from playing Orix Blue Wave? Yeah, not good--especially on sharply hit line drives.)

As alternative, can't we just get the Marlins to move to Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic? At least fans there would go to games, unlike South Floridians.

Look, you're robbing fans of a true Opening Day experience. The Opening Days for Boston and Oakland fans will be like "Fake, but accurate" Opening Days. You may say it's Opening Day, you might even dupe yourself into thinking it's Opening Day, you may put bunting up like it's Opening Day, but it's not Opening Day.

Here's the deal: Cut this Opening Day in Japan crap out. And the same goes for the Sunday Night Baseball game; let's do away with that as being Opening Day/Night/Dusk. It's nice, but not the real deal, either. So let's go back to the good old days when the Cincinnati Reds kicked the season off like they did for eons by annually making the first pitch of the year. Let's make it day where all the teams play, too. And they all play day games on top of it, so people can skip out of work or take their kids out of school and enjoy a game after a long winter. Make it be an event, again--a happening, bordering on a national holiday.

This is our game, Bud. This is our time to enjoy it. Be a sport and give it back to us.

Sincerely,
A Fan