Oakland A's headed to Las Vegas

Like the Red Sox with their Patriots' Day morning game, I could see Las Vegas having a Midnight Madness/Viva Las Vegas game a couple times a year, along with some late night teevee programming for MLB.tv or ESPN or whoever carries it. Play it as a split doubleheader with a 7 pm game the night before.

 

A really creative marketing mind, if there is such a thing in the baseball world, could cook
up a "24 Hours of Baseball" promotion like this for a Memorial Day or 4th of July weekend.

Midnight EST: Late Night from LA (9:00 PST)
3:00 am EST: Vegas Midnight Madness (12:00 PST)
6:00 am EST: Baseball Breakfast (Class AAA International League)
10:00 am EST: Brunch in Boston
1:00 pm EST: Big Apple Lunch
4:00 pm EST: Midwestern Munchies
7:00 pm EST: Diamond Dinner in KC /Denver/ Texas
10:00 pm EST: West Coast Windup

Obviously the sub-headings need some more thought, but some sponsorship ideas would be naturals. It would really require only two MLB games (the midnight game in Vegas and the late morning game in Boston) to be played in really unusual time slots (along with the minor league game to fill the sunrise slot). Hell, why not play the sunrise game at the Field of Dreams?

It would all have to be cleared through the MLBPA of course but I'm sure some kind of creative deals could be worked out with the sponsors.

 

But it wouldn't be midnight in Vegas - it would be 1 AM.

 

Well, the starting times of all these games would probably be fudged around an hour or so in each direction to make the schedule fit.

From the players/ MLBPA perspective there's probably not much difference between starting a game at midnight local time vs 1 am -- obviously it's a major departure requiring special accommodations.

 

The International League game likely wouldn’t go four hours.

To fill time, they could have a random Little League game play at 9 a.m. or something.

 

Probably none of these games are going four hours anymore. You'd plan for gaps between the games by having in-studio shows and maybe some kind of "batting cage" show for the upcoming games.

 

Bill Veeck did something similar during World War II when he owned the minor league Milwaukee Brewers. He'd schedule a game at 9 a.m. for graveyard shift workers.

 

Some minor league teams will schedule a number of 9 or 10 am games early in the season so they can sell tickets to schools for field trips.

 

I think the Alaska Summer League does have a midnight game, under the sun.

 

You would have to jiggle the schedule some to get the players on board with a midnight game. Probably at least one extra day off afterward, since it would totally wreck the routine and make travel a nightmare.

Maybe they could try it coming into the all-star break. Do it that Saturday night as the final game of the series, and then the teams are off on Sunday. Road team gets home a bit earlier (bonus points if they can arrange the schedule so it's a west coast team) and they get an extra day off leading into the extended break.

 

If they had the midnight game on Saturday night/Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend ...
MLB probably wouldn't want to give either team the next day (Memorial Day) off, but the following two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) might work. Which would give the visiting team essentially a 5-day midseason stopover in Las Vegas, including two days completely off (during which they could do whatever they wanted). Now I realize vacation weekends aren't huge incentives for players making millions who can go anywhere they want in the offseason, but if they could parlay one major schedule adjustment into a mini midseason getaway, I imagine that might be a selling point. Since the big time sponsors of this whole shebang would probably have to include some of the major Vegas hotels, I'm sure comp arrangements would be part of the deal.