Rescheduled NY Mets start time should be the first step toward another change

The New York Mets won’t play at 7:10pm on Tuesday or Wednesday. For both games, first pitch is now scheduled for 4:10pm.

It’s an inconvenience for those who planned to attend. It’s also a wise choice for the Mets who saw the forecast of cold and wind and a ballpark of empty seats.

The Mets will be offering complimentary tickets for both games on a limited basis to ensure they get some fannies in seats, concessions sold, and a few arms and legs from parking.

The choice to move up the game time without any sort of threat of severe weather like rain, snow, or hellfire is unusual. Have baseball fans gotten soft? No. Baseball is meant to be played under the sun. Our work lives are the problem. This change to the start time won’t have the Mets playing at 4:10pm regularly, but might just be a first step toward a future where all Mets games start a little earlier.

We’re entering a new phase where all Mets games during the colder months may soon start earlier

A 4:10pm start is a problem for a lot of fans who work a traditional 9-5 job, give or take an hour. You can only skip so many days to attend a ball game.

What a lot of teams do is start in the 6 o’clock hour. The Cleveland Guardians have notoriously early starts, first pitch on Monday taking place at 6:10pm. Several other teams routinely have 6:40 or 6:45pm first pitches. The Mets, in a city where rat-racing to the top of the corporate ladder is practically a requirement to live here, have stayed with start times at 7:10pm.

What difference does starting 30 minutes earlier really do? The pitch clock has helped games stay under 3 hours, sometimes closer to 2 and a half. The benefits are clear for all audiences. You can call it a night before 9pm. Fewer minutes under a dark sky and more with the sun glaring down, it’s only the tail end of a game where the cold can feel most brutal.

It’s a matter of personal preference for your lifestyle. Night owls will surely take the 7:10pm start times. Early risers or ones with kids would probably prefer a half-hour earlier. So would most people watching on television. Who wants to kill time between 6-7pm for games to start? Better yet, who wants to stay up until 10pm or, heaven forbid, after just to see the conclusion?

Fewer fans than ever tune in for sporting events live anyway so it’s not the television audience to think of most. It’s those in attendance. Less time to flee from work to get to Citi Field seems counterintuitive when it comes to catering to your audience who’ll be in attendance.

An early start time will be something to experiment with and exclusive to April, maybe May, and again in September. School related for sure, the next generation of Mets fans are getting to the ballpark based on the availability of older ones.