Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Eternal Optimism in the Form of a Press Release

Posted By on Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 1:15 PM

There's about three weeks left in the regular season for Major League baseball, and at this point the vast majority of teams' fan bases have given up on their annual overembellished hopes of a World Series title.

That includes you, Diamondbacks fans. Stop kidding yourself: they're 10 games behind the Giants for first place in the NL West with 20 to go, and at five back in the wild card standings they'd need to leapfrog four other teams to get into the playoffs. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

That's why it's time to bite the bullet, suck it up and look to the future. The future that came today in the form of the 2013 schedule announcement!

Arizona opens the 2013 slate at home on April 1 (nope, this isn't an early April Fool's Day joke) against the St. Louis Cardinals. The D-Backs will close out next season with three games against the Washington Nationals Sept. 27-29.

In between is the usual flotsam and jetsam of games against the National League West, but there's also some very intriguing highlights. First and foremost: a Memorial Day (May 27) doubleheader at home against the Texas Rangers. That's followed by a day off, then two games in two days at Texas.

Those interleague matchups are part of the quirky 2013 schedule for all of MLB, as Houston's move from the NL to the American League means interleague games will occur all season instead of just a block in May-June.

Arizona's other interleague foes all hail from the AL East, with the D-Backs hosting Tampa Bay and Baltimore in August and Toronto in September (including Labor Day), while visiting the New York Yankees in mid-April, Tampa in late July and Boston in early August.

For fans of other teams not named Arizona, the Los Angeles Dodgers come to Phoenix April 12-14, July 8-10 and Sept. 16-18, while the Chicago Cubs will make their visit July 22-25.

Next year's gonna be awesome! That's what all you downtrodden D-Backs are thinking now, huh? Much better than lamenting the current team's 2-games-under-.500 record.

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