Baltimore Orioles: Day games, night games, and which one is better?

The Baltimore Orioles and other northeastern teams don’t play as many day games as some other teams. Which way is better?

With the weather being what it is, you have to wonder if the Baltimore Orioles are going to play tonight. Where that leaves things for the series, I don’t know. I suspect that they’d probably play a doubleheader tomorrow, with game one starting at 1 PM and game two at the regular 7 PM. A similar scenario happened a couple of years back when the LA Dodgers were making their only visit to Camden Yards.

Day games are unfortunately something that we don’t regularly see in Baltimore, aside from Sunday and Opening Day. Without counting a few 4 PM Saturday starts, the Orioles have exactly two daytime games during the week scheduled at home for the remainder of the season. One is in a few weeks for a series finale against Seattle (with the Birds heading to the west coast after the game – explaining the matinee). The other is Memorial Day Monday afternoon.

I’m a big fan of day games, probably because I’m somewhat of an old school baseball guy. The roots of the sport are afternoon games. Of course that’s primarily because ballparks didn’t have lights to be able to play games at night. Now they do, which is why so many games are in the evening.

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Comparatively, the Washington Nationals, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees/Mets, and Boston Red Sox play a few more day games scattered across the season than do the Orioles. But they still don’t play many games in the afternoon during the week. Why is this even an issue, you ask?

The answer is that it’s not – per se. It’s a matter of personal preference. However afternoon games during the week are special occasions in a sense. Fans feel like they’re

doing something wrong in the sense that they’re taking time off from work and playing hooky. However at the end of the day, most teams who play day games during the week do so because it’s getaway day.

I suspect that the reason the Orioles and other teams in the northeast play so few day games is because they’ve done studies. The teams know that they have the best shot at optimizing attendance if games are at night as opposed to during the day. There are exceptions to this, of course – Wrigley Field being one of them.

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But most sports comparative to baseball in terms of schedule don’t play mid-week day games either. You never seem to see the NBA or NHL scheduling a 1 PM game on a Wednesday afternoon. And again, the reason is because attendance would be sparse. Sure you’ll get people listening on the radio during work hours, however that’s still a tough sell for fans.

But again, I would like to see teams loosen up on this a bit. In the golden era of the sport, the games started in the early afternoon. Now there are people out there who are going to say times change and so forth, and I understand that. But again, mid-week day games are special events in baseball.

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It wouldn’t surprise me if the Birds end up playing a day game tomorrow, as part of a doubleheader. At this time obviously, we don’t know…but who’s to say they don’t manage to get the game in tonight!