Open Late

One of the complaints people have about living on the East Coast is that games, particularly baseball games, start too late when they’re played on the West Coast. Typically night games start around 7 p.m. local time, which means for a Braves’ fan wanting to see his team play the L.A. Dodgers, the game won’t start until 10 p.m. back in Georgia.

This is crazy talk. Well, not the facts about start times, those are actual facts, but the complaints about it starting too late are crazy talk.

I love the West Coast games. Not because I stay up until 1 a.m. or later to watch the end of them, but because I have the option of staying up until 1 a.m. to watch them. To me, there’s something about staying up way later than you should to watch a game that you know you can check your phone when you wake up in the morning and see the final score. Even though I'm an adult, I still enjoy getting to stay up late on a school/work night. Only now, I can ingest copious amounts of caffeine if I need to in order to get through the next day.

I can’t imagine living in Oregon somewhere and knowing my sports day ended at 10 p.m. I mean, I guess I would probably get more reading done or catch up on those television shows I put off during baseball season if I had from 10-11:30 each night not taken up with sports. I could write that book I keep telling myself I need to write* or take time to actually call friends and family and just see how they’re doing.

*I don’t actually keep telling myself that I need to write a book.

 But I enjoy having the option of knowing I can find a random regular season Mariners/Angels game at 10:05 and can turn that on and fall asleep to it. Or I can turn on that random game and stay up until 1 a.m. enjoying both the game and late night baseball twitter, which is always fun.