If my boss is reading this, let it be known. I will be calling in to work “Drunk” on March 25 and 26 after watching the Red Sox play the Athletics in Japan. I used to think that the Patriots Day game started early, but 10:00 am will seem like a night game after watching the first 2 games of the year. The Red Sox and the MLB have officially announced that the games played against the Athletics in Japan will be starting at 6:07 am eastern standard time on March 25 and 26. OK bar owners, start planning your 5 am openings and Sox-watching parties!

As we know, we will be playing the Athletics in the Tokyo Dome to open the season. The Sox are giving up about a week of Spring Training to do so, though they will still play a couple exhibition games while they are over there in the days leading up to the games (Hanshin Tigers at 11:07 p.m. EST on March 21 [even though it is March 22 there] and the Yomiuri Giants at 6:07 a.m. EST on March 23). The times get really tricky since it will be 13 hours from “now” in Japan. So that means that the Japanese will be watching the games at 7:00 local time. (They are 14 hours ahead at the time of this posting in case you are double-checking me, but we will Spring Ahead due to daylight savings before this game is played and they don’t honor that in Japan, so in late March, they will be only 13 hours ahead. Got it? OK, good.)

On a more personal note, I arrived in Japan the first time I visited there at the exact moment the 2003 baseball season kicked off. I remember watching Hideki Matsui make his debut as a Yankee while waiting in line at the bank for currency conversion. It’ll be fun to experience the baseball season starting the “other way” with the game in Japan and me in the US.

All of this is quite exciting to me. It will be fun to be watching the Sox open the season at sunrise. According to the US Naval Observatory, the sun will first break twilight at 6:10 with official sunrise being at 6:38. How cool would it be for David Ortiz to hit a home run at the precise moment the sun is rising in Boston upon a new baseball season? But I digress. The bottom line is that we have a couple Sox games that are going to be starting while its still dark in Massachusetts. I think it’ll be exciting, and something that the true fans, the Red Sox Super Fans, will all flock toward.

And just in case you are going to be heading to the land of the rising sun to see this game, you should know that tickets go on sale on February 9.

Share:

Hide Sites

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Big News!, General Postings, Ticket Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.