Two Teams, One Coast All That Seem to Exist on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball

It's on days like these that I realize what a waste my semi-expensive prep school education was.

It's on days like these that I realize that a Mobius strip (look it up) has a counterpart in real life.

It's on days like these that I realize the disconnect Bristol, Conn. has with the rest of the U.S. -- or at least with those of us who don't call the Eastern Time Zone home.

Bristol, of course, is the home of ESPN, a point of geography I picked up at school. At about the same time, I was taught that the United States was comprised of two coasts, that the Louisiana Purchase opened up the country to that possibility and that the Lewis and Clark expedition went to great lengths to reach the Pacific Ocean and help make the country bi-coastal.

On Tuesday, ESPN released the schedule for its centerpiece baseball broadcast, Sunday Night Baseball, and I learned, once again to my chagrin, that as far as televised baseball is concerned, U.S. geography is pretty much confined to a Mobius strip that leaves the U.S. with just one coast and one time zone.

In the first eight weeks of the Sunday telecasts, six of the eight games will be in either American League or National League East cities, that five of the eight will include only teams from the Eastern Time Zone and that eight of the eight will have at least one team calling EDT (it will be daylight time by then) home.

The Yankees and the Red Sox play each other in Fenway Park twice in the first six weeks. Week 8 has the Yankees at the Mets, who, like the Bronx Bombers, play Sunday night games three times in the first eight weeks.

The first game that calls for any AL or NL West team to raise its hand and submit itself for Sunday night recognition comes in Week 9, on May 30, when Texas pays a call on Minnesota in the Twins' new ballpark. It's a game that (gasp) has two non-East teams, although it can properly be said that it's only a scheduling convenience that Texas is designated a West team -- it's a slight jaunt of 1,500 miles if someone from the Dallas Metroplex wants to dip his tootsies in the Pacific Ocean. It's 1,000 miles to the Atlantic. You do the math.

If you want to see a game involving a team from an actual Western state, the schedule-makers advise a wait until July 4, when the Royals pay a call on the Angels. (Whether they can truly be the Los Angeles Angels when they play in Anaheim, some 30 miles away, is a subject for another day).

The July 4 date is good, though, because it points out that we need independence from schedulers who would so skew the pairings that we viewers have to wait until Independence Day before ESPN realizes that there is much baseball outside of the Boston-New York-Philadelphia corridor.

Don't get me wrong; I fully understand about the need to maximize ratings, although there's no way I can accept any explanation from anybody about why President Obama had to move the State of the Union so as to not conflict with the premier of the final season of Lost. TV is completely out of control, and the ESPN East Coast bias is just part of the bigger picture.

So I know the Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, etc. are going to get overexposed no matter who does the scheduling.

I was musing about that after the schedule was released Tuesday by ESPN, kicking around the apparently absurd thought that the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Phillies need to play somebody other than each other from time to time. And that brought to mind an old clip from The West Wing where the Richard Schiff character, Toby Ziegler, goes on a short rant about how he'd be fine if the Yankees and Red Sox just played each other every day.

Apparently after NBC shut the doors on The West Wing after seven seasons, Toby Ziegler moved to Bristol.

Where, evidently, he lives in a perfect world.

Too bad for the rest of us.