Baseball In The Daytime: 4-2-08

As if the giant scheduling circus we've endured over the past week wasn't enough, baseball in its infinite wisdom denied us from any day games yesterday.

That's right. After Monday's orgy of eleven scheduled afternoon contests, the MLB slate was entirely after-hours on Tuesday. This in inexcusable. April is a month that needs games scheduled every day. There are kids somewhere in this country on spring break, and they need to stay out of trouble. Thousands of men are accustomed to feigning illness for the NCAA tournament and opening rounds of the Masters, what are they supposed to do? Go to work? Banky was forced to masturbate nine times, which is dangerous.

Most importantly, in the absence of day baseball, I'm forced to listen to Stephen A. Smith during the day. And doing that makes me want to go beat a child. Bud Selig is now causing the youth of America to get knocked the fuck out. But the kids are safe today, three games are scheduled. After the jump, your menu...

KC @ Detroit, 11:05 Mountain After a surprisingly good rookie campaign in '07, Brian Bannister takes the ball for your first-place Kansas City Royals in the Motor City. His opposition is noted gambler and chicken-roaster Kenny Rogers, who has promised to keeps his hands free of "dirt" over the course of today's game. After Monday's extra-innings thriller we demand another great game, or Baseball In The Daytime will ignore the Royals all season. Actually that might happen anyway.

Milwaukee @ Chicago Cubs, 12:20 This is another encore from an overtime Opening Day classic. On Monday the Brewers and Cubs' aces sent a scoreless game into the ninth, where Kerry Wood and Eric Gagne managed to both douse themselves in gasoline and play with matches. At least this guy managed to make headline writers' jobs easier (or harder, if they work for a family newspaper). Today they send Jeff Suppan and Ted Lilly into battle, and man let's just move on.

Boston @ Oakland, 1:35 I don't know if you watched these two clubs play last night, but if not you missed a true gem out of Daisuke Matsuzaka. He was brilliant in spurts last year, but spent much of the season working out of jams and nibbling with junk. Last night, we saw the Dice-K that was promised when he signed his wacky contract. He cut down on his variety of pitches, owned both sides of the plate and kept hitters guessing. Granted, it was against a weak Oakland lineup and home plate umpire Wally Bell had a zone that was about a yard wide, but Matsuzaka was spectacular. Francona shocked everyone when he pulled Dice in the 7th with the following line: 6 2/3 IP, 96 pitches (61 strikes), 2 hits, 1 ER, 9 K, 0 BB. I guess he's being saved for the long season. Today we get Jon Lester and Rich Harden, the same matchup displayed for the second Tokyo game last week.

And here's your scheduling info, kids--Play Ball!

XM Radio MLB game schedule

DirecTV Extra Innings schedule

MLB.TV entry page