Zamboni Spring - The International League (IL) Schedule Gives Northern Teams a Chilly Reception Opening Day

MAJORBLOGS.NET - For thirty-eight summers, the Norfolk Tides general manager Dave Rosenfield has put pencil to paper and carved out the next season’s schedule for the Triple-A International League.

Giving Rosenfield this power is like Yankees GM Brian Cashman planning the American League schedule, or putting a mouse in charge of the cheese. Rosenfield as timeline tinkerer gives the IL’s credibility a punch in the gut.

Every season there are ludicrous scheduling decisions, with home games assigned to clubs in the far North where the weather in April can still yield a lot of snow, as it did this year.  It is not as if this season is particularly unusual either: Rochester amazingly has not opened in the South since 1987.  What that means is that teams in warmer climes like Norfolk pick up games that fans up North should be seeing.

The 2007 schedule has created a (snow) storm of controversy in many of those northern cities, and deservedly so.

Let’s put on our snowshoes and wade through the fallout of the IL scheduling "quirks"  that seem to favor the central and southern International League clubs:

Buffalo Bisons

Situation:  Buffalo is scheduled to open with a four-game set against the Richmond Braves on April 5, when the snow is just starting to melt in Buffalo. Had the game been held in Richmond, where snow this time of year is less common, there would likely be little problem. Not surprisingly, all four games were postponed by snow and cold.

Fallout: This was Richmond’s only trip to Buffalo all season. The teams will have to make up the games in Richmond in June.  An IL rule prevents teams from playing four consecutive double-headers, so only three of the four postponed games can be made up.  Buffalo and Richmond permanently lose one game off their 144-game schedules.

Rochester Red Wings

Situation: The Red Wings in the arctic of April were incredibly saddled with 10 home games to open the season. Of those 10, four were lost to the weather and another suspended game  remains in limbo.  The Wings and Norfolk Tides were tied 2-2 on April 10, but their game was suspended by rain in the 12th inning. 15 of their first 19 were at home, when weather cancellations and delays are common.

Rochester drew a few hundred die-hard fans for its opening games. The fan-friendly front office set up space heaters in the stands and offered free coffee and hot chocolate in the later innings.  The players wore ski masks under their baseball caps.

Ah, the summer game.

Fallout: When the suspended game resumes on May 19, it won’t be at Frontier Field in Rochester but rather at Harbor Park in balmy Norfolk. The next day, the teams will play a doubleheader, making up one of the games permanently lost off Rochester’s home schedule.  Norfolk gets the game, and Rochester gets the raw end of the deal.

The Red Wings ended up playing only nine of their 15 scheduled home games in April. Again, had the venue for the games been switched, fans of the teams in the North of the IL wouldn’t be slighted so many dates.

IL president Randy Mobley originally said that the Wings and Bisons would not be the home team for these makeup games because “it would confuse fans,” but he has since relented on that point and will let Buffalo and Rochester bat last in the road makeup games.

Ottawa Lynx

Situation: The Lynx are the IL’s northern-most city, and the last remaining in Canada. Originally they were scheduled to open the season on April 5 against Rochester. But when Lynx management balked, the IL asked Rochester to open instead.

Fallout:  Through some complicated, convoluted plan, the Lynx and Red Wings scheduled “makeup” doubleheaders in July in Ottawa for the games that weren’t even played in April. Snow-pening Day in Rochester was postponed, so another doubleheader was set for Frontier Field on May 5.

Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees

Situation: The Yankees opened the season at home against Rosenfield’s Norfolk Tides. One of the games was postponed by snow and will be made up in Norfolk.

Fallout: The Tides went 2-3 on their scheduled seven-game road trip to open the season, but they gained two home games and the completion of the suspended game as bonus prizes.

Now that’s fair.

A recent IL rule states that each team in the North Division must open in the South at least once every three years. That’s a nice start, but it’s not good enough. Decades ago, Rochester routinely would hit the road for much of April and not open at home until May

The Eastern League had a few "what where you thinking?" moments in their schedule too. As much as you’d like to blame Rosenfield, it is not all his fault. For 38 summers, the IL executive board has rubber-stamped his creations, apparently unwilling to spend the money to out source the job.

It is not an easy gig, but league officials need to use some common sense here. Start the season in Charlotte, Richmond, Louisville and Norfolk. Every year. To fill out the schedule, let the other 10 IL clubs rotate being home to start the year.
If that’s not feasible, don’t be dumb and dumber by having the Southern teams open in the North, where they visit only once a year, leaving those games to be made up down South.

If the International League refuses to permanently shift the openers to the south, then they should start the season a week later and pray for sunshine. IL officials argue that this would compromise the integrity of the schedule. They’ll tell you that it would shorten the season, and force teams to lose home games.

Isn’t that what happened during Zamboni spring to the teams from the North?  If the season is going to be shorter by decree or by weather, at least spread the lost games around to all of the clubs in the International League system.

- JIM MANDELARO