Having said all that, this Giants team isn’t going away with Buster Posey and the way they pitch, so we’re bound to start seeing them nationally a lot more since they are likely to be playing in the postseason for the next 5-7 years.

My overall point still stands: if baseball wants to be inclusive, it shouldn’t come off as exclusive.

What difference does it make that a small majority of the players aren’t from America? According to your math, that still leaves about 75% of its players hailing from this country. And I bet about 90% of the viewers at home are from the U.S.

There is a need to play that song because Baseball is America’s pastime, and most of us take pride in having the privelege to live here and be able to watch a good ball game whenever the hell we want.

MLB will do earlier starts as much as its sponsors allow it to. They want to court the younger fans with earlier starts. (Despite the fact that it’s not a school night, it’s not like East Coast kids below the age of 10 or whatever easily stay up until midnight.)

People who live outside the Eastern time zone. Those of us on the Left Coast would find a much earlier start during the week to be very inconvenient. If you’ve ever watched a game held on the West Coast, you’ll see people who can’t make it to the game until after it starts at 7pm Pacific time (i.e. 10pm Eastern). It’s a little bit easier to get home than to get to the game, but 8pm Eastern is definitely inconveniently early for most people out here.

Also, getting off Fox and away from their hideous production style and moronic announcing crew would help. A lot.

Now, I’m not going to shout about “East Coast Bias”, but I do want to point out that the idea of starting World Series games at 7pm Eastern time (on a weeknight) means that, on the West Coast, these games are starting at 4 in the afternoon. Sure, that’s great for some people, but for a large demographic of daytime workers, people who head home at five, get home around six or seven, the game would already be in the seventh inning.

(and the reason you don’t hear this complaint during the regular season is because during the season each team starts the game at their own appropriate time, according to their own time zone — that’s why I can stay up until midnight watching Dodgers games)

I really don’t think there’s a great solution for this. I think the fairest might be to start the game at 7pm in the time zone where it’s being played, that way it’ll be at its most convenient for the hometown fans, and the rest of us can just adjust our lives to it, but I doubt that’ll happen.

Anyway, my point is that there’s a lot of this country that doesn’t live in the Eastern Time Zone, and that’s a factor here.

Who are these people who like the games starting at 8 or later? Seriously speak up. I’ve never seen one person say they prefer this start time, nor have I ever heard anyone complain in the regular season that the games start too early?

If polls have been taken, any polls where people prefer later start times please link me I’d love to read them.