Red Sox, Indians should dodge snow on Opening Day

Opening Day is here at last! Or at least Red Sox (and Indians) fans hope that it is. For at least a week now, the specter of snow has loomed over the April 4th festivities. Now, with just hours to go before the season begins, we're getting a better picture of whether or not the weather will permit things to go as planned.

The bad news: it's going to be cold, and there's some chance that it will end up wet as well. Given the league's odd decision not to take advantage of their warmer-weather stadiums (teams like Houston, Los Angeles, and St. Louis are all starting the season on the road, for instance), there's no shortage of baseball teams playing in decidedly football-like weather come the first days of April. For the Red Sox, the day promises game-time highs of 34 degrees.

The good news: that chance of snow--the thing that would actually hurt their chances to get this game in--is fairly low. There's a pretty high chance that Cleveland will get some snow during Opening Day, but by the time the game starts at 4:10 p.m. EDT, that should be in the past. And while Cleveland's ground crew may not regularly be asked to get the field ready for a baseball game so soon after snow, we're not exactly talking a blizzard here.

Look, we're not ones to talk in Boston. Snow in April is, uh, not exactly unheard of. Snow yesterday was not exactly unheard of. But maybe just don't schedule Red Sox - Indians for this early in the year? Sure, starting every season on the road might end up getting tiresome, but at the end of the day you're going to get 81 home games and 81 road games either way. And if you can never escape the weather entirely, we can at least dodge having one of the great signs that warmer days are here again being sunk by snow.

But for now, we get lucky. Snow? Maybe. Cold? Definitely. But Opening Day? Opening Day is on.