The alarm went off at 5:45 Tuesday morning and I was not too happy to hear it. Usually, Boston Red Sox opening day is one I really look forward to. After a long winter (it’s still going, isn’t it?) I can’t wait to watch a little baseball. Now that the Red Sox are the defending World Series champs for the second time in four years, I’m especially pumped up to watch the Sox. But not at 6 in the morning. I have to admit, I’m being a bit selfish here. I do, after all, work nights and a 6 a.m. wake-up call for anything is pretty difficult. But who benefits from this type of start time anyway? Certainly not Oakland A’s fans. They had to get up at 3 a.m. to watch their team’s season opener. Tuesday morning wasn’t a whole lot of fun. Sure the Sox won a thriller — 6-5 in the 10th inning — but baseball fans shouldn’t be forced to watch the season opener at 6 a.m. Most of us can’t think at 6 a.m., much less enjoy a baseball game. Major League Baseball is trying to globalize the game. Make it attractive to more markets and baseball crazed Japan is the perfect place to start. While trips like this help expand the game, it punishes American fans. The pomp and circumstance of opening day is lost to the American fan who either had to set an alarm to get up or had to try to catch a few peeks at the game before rushing off to work. Opening day usually has the feel of a holiday. You skip work to watch the game, or bring a radio into school to keep tabs on it. You rush home to watch the last few innings on television or listen to them on the drive home. Tuesday’s opener just felt off. For those of us who work nights, we had to disrupt our schedules to see the game. For people go to work during the day, catching a few innings on the tube was pretty difficult because instead of dropping onto the couch after the work day was over, you were probably running around trying to get ready for it. Start times in baseball are a mess anyway. The regular season usually isn’t too bad, unless your team is on the West coast. Those 10 p.m. starts aren’t a whole heck of a lot of fun. But 7 p.m., that works pretty well for everyone. But don’t get me started on the playoffs. Then the complaint will be that games start too late. Remember the World Series, when first pitch was 8:35 p.m. We were lucky if games ended before 1 a.m. That doesn’t really work for anyone. I also don’t think these trips are fair to the players. They have to adjust their bodies to the time difference after an 18-hour flight. Already it appears the flight took its toll on two Red Sox players, as Sean Casey (neck) and J.D. Drew (back) both came up lame in Japan. It gets worse. After two regular-season games, the Sox and A’s will fly back to the states and play exhibition games. What sense does that make? Sure, they don’t have to play games that count while readjusting their bodies to the time change once again, but it has got to be awful strange to go from the regular season, back to spring training, then back to the regular season again. But the real problem I have is that baseball didn’t take their fan base into consideration when scheduling these games. It apparently wasn’t important whether or not American baseball fans could enjoy opening day. All that mattered was the bottom line. With all that said, I’ll be waking up again at 6 this morning to watch the Sox. I can’t help myself. Scott Martin — 621-5618 smartin@centralmaine.com