It’s sunny. The birds are chirping. Things are warming up in the northern half of the country. Baseball season is upon us.
Except, it isn’t. At least not yet.
Opening Day of the 2025 MLB season is inexplicably scheduled for Thursday. Yes, baseball will (officially) kick off its season on the same day sports media will turn its attention to the Sweet 16.
It’s an own goal of epic proportions.
March is dominated by the time-honored American tradition of filling out March Madness brackets, only to watch them get obliterated by 18- and 19-year-olds playing in the biggest games of their lives. There’s little room for other sports breakthroughs. Even the NBA and NHL, nearing the end of their regular seasons, take a backseat to college hoops in March.
It’s especially difficult for baseball, a sport few pay attention to until late summer, to carve out a little bit of space in a crowded March sports calendar. For MLB, tentpole events like Opening Day, the Home Run Derby, and the All-Star Game are quite literally some of the biggest draws of its regular season.
Letting Opening Day get overshadowed by college basketball is a strategic blunder that should never happen in this age of hyper-optimized live sports scheduling.
And to make matters worse, there’s a clear alternative.
Tuesday, March 25, would have been a perfect day to start the baseball season. Let’s look at what MLB would have been competing with on the schedule if it had decided to have Opening Day today.
TNT has an NBA doubleheader: Golden State Warriors-Miami Heat at 7:30 p.m. ET and Oklahoma City Thunder-Sacramento Kings at 10 p.m. ET. ESPN is airing Games 2 and 3 of the TGL Finals at 7 p.m. ET and 9 p.m. ET (if necessary). ESPN2 has some NIT quarterfinals action, while ESPNU is airing the CBI.
That’s not exactly a murderer’s row of sports programming. Certainly not as daunting as the competition MLB will face on Thursday.
But instead, MLB has chosen to put the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers’ Opening Day game directly opposite of Maryland-Florida and BYU-Alabama in March Madness. That, itself, is madness.
Sure, there’s an argument that Tuesday is not as ideal for fans attending the game in person as Thursday. But we’re long past the illusion that leagues make scheduling decisions with any regard for the in-person attendee. Those who can afford to take off work for Opening Day on Thursday are likely able to do the same on Tuesday. And the national attention MLB would get by moving Opening Day up a couple of days far outweighs any ill-will generated from fans that could no longer go in person.
Today would be a day dedicated to baseball. Instead of First Take talking about Doc Rivers, they’d have Chris “Mad Dog” Russo and Jeff Passan on to talk about Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani. FS1’s First Things First literally did a segment about Bronny James’ G-League performance today. If that’s the type of segment making the cut, even the most NFL and NBA-centric shows would be finding time to talk baseball if today were Opening Day.
For a league desperate to market its biggest stars and gain mainstream appeal, it’s baffling that they let a prime opportunity slip away.
Baseball should be there to fill the void when nothing else is going on. Nothing else is going on today, which means baseball has failed.