This year, the Red Sox will have their opening game in Tokyo playing against the Oakland Athletics. This is a great problem for the players considering jet lag. Plus spring training gets all muddled. The team must start to get ready sooner because the season starts on March 25th in Tokyo. The game itself will follow two other games for the Hanshin Tigers and Yomiuri Giants. Both of these are exhibition games. Their first team workout isn’t until February 22 in Florida. Pitcher and catchers will be coming later. So they don’t have a lot of time to get into shape and practiced. They decided they would go because baseball has started branching out into other nations stronger than ever before.

They wanted to be part of that branching, so they decided to start early even though it would cause some other problems. One very potential problem is Curt Schilling. The pitcher for the team has injured his shoulder and the doctor is saying until he has surgery to fix the torn tendon, he will not be able to pitch in any more games. So they may have to find an interim pitcher until he has the surgery. They will be keeping an eye on him until he does.