Let's stay in Japan, shall we...

I was as skeptical as anyone about the Red Sox opening their season in Japan. The trip is too far, Dice-K's wife is pregnant, the games will be on at odd hours and the Sox will have 2 less games of Spring Training - by this time you should know the objections by heart. Well, I was wrong.

I like having the games at 6 AM.

For one thing, it eliminates the danger of accidentally hearing the Dennis and Callahan show. It also adds some spice to your morning: you can watch the games BEFORE you go to work! And it opens up the rest of the evening; Jenny and I had plenty of time to watch the Bruins (who actually won a game) and "the Riches" without having to worry baseball. Work is much more fun when you can spend half of your time worrying about a baseball game. And my cat was so happy about the arrangement that he did NOT try to kill me last night. Jonathan Papelbohn's insanity seems less insane at 7AM than it does at any other time of day. Hell, even Manny looks like normal when I'm essentially comatose.

As I said, baseball games in the early morning are a good thing. I understand that the Sox wouldn't want to move to Japan or anything quite that drastic. But perhaps as a compromise, they could come back to the US and play more afternoon games. On weekends. Like they used to all of two years ago.

Random Rants:

- Two Hockey East teams make the NCAA's. That's down from five last year which was also not a great year for the league. If neither BC nor UNH make the Frozen Four, this is officially the worst year in Hockey East history. I wasn't quite aware of how precarious UVM and BU were positioned, but seeing both teams out of consideration wasn't something I wanted.

-Speaking of college hockey, the WCHA and CCHA tournaments made for fun viewing last weekend, especially when Doug Woog said something weird (twice every period). The ECAC championship game was okay, but the broadcast quality was horrendous. You couldn't make out the orange in Princeton's jerseys and it looked like Harvard was the team in BLACK. The Hockey East championship game was extraordinarily dull - especially in comparison to the goalie optional semi game between BC and UNH that went 3 over time periods. I was fast asleep by the team BU and UVM got to the second period of the next game.

-The Celtics have a 2 game losing streak. Meanwhile, the Bruins played their best game of the season at Toronto. Why can't we have two good teams at the same time?