Major League Baseball is certainly optimistic. It, like the rest of us, has seen the utter train wreck of a year that is 2016 unfold yet it is somehow certain that the world will still exist in 2017. I’d probably short that stock to be honest.
Assuming I’m wrong and we aren’t visited by the retribution we so richly deserve in the form of, say, a giant mountain being hurled down upon us, creating a great cataclysm which creates an ever-churning blood-red sea while ushering in an age of darkness, there will be a 2017 baseball season. And that season will have a schedule.
Major League Baseball today announced that schedule, which will begin on Sunday, April 2nd, when the Tampa Bay Rays host the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks host the San Francisco Giants. I don’t know that the world was clamoring to see the Rays and Dbacks in prime time, but at least ESPN is guaranteed two marquee teams in games certain to not be rained out. Beyond that Sunday night teaser, thirteen games are set for Opening Day on Monday, April 3rd, while the first full slate of 15 games is scheduled for Wednesday, April 5th.
The last day of the 2017 regular season will be on Sunday, October 1st. Other important dates next season include Jackie Robinson Day on Saturday, April 15th; the first day of the 2017 MLB Draft on Monday, June 12th; and Baseball’s All-Star festivities at Marlins Park in Miami from Sunday, July 9th through Tuesday, July 11th. If the playoff schedule is similar to the past few years, the World Series, if it goes seven games, would probably end on November 2.
Go to MLB.com for the schedules of all 30 teams.