BOSTON — And that, baseball fans, is why you don't open the season in Boston. The Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays were rained out Monday, the inevitable outcome of a forecast New England has been watching for nearly a week. Temperatures in the 40s, heavy rain, wind all in all, just another early April day in Boston.

Tampa still plays in a dome, right? And that dome sat empty Monday along the sun-drenched Gulf Coast of Florida, right? Tough to understand why the Sox are the home team in this series. Easy to understand why neither team played baseball Monday.

After this ill-advised, three-day set at Fenway Park, the Sox head west for six games in (hopefully) sunny California, where they will face two playoff-caliber teams in the Los Angeles Angels and Oakland Athletics.

Then it's back to Fenway Park for one of the longest homestands of the season – who decided the Sox should get all these April home games, anyway? It starts innocently enough with four against the rebuilding Baltimore Orioles, then gets tougher with a pair of games against a Minnesota Twins team many expect to win the American League Central.

After a day off April 23, the Sox will enter what could be the toughest stretch of the season: seventeen games without a day off against three of the top teams in the league.

During that grind, the Sox will play the New York Yankees five times, the Rays seven times and the Cleveland Indians five times.

You don't win a championship, or even a division title, in April and May. You can, however, lose one if you fall too far behind. Just ask the Detroit Tigers, who lost their first seven games last season – 10 of their first 12 – and never recovered.

There are always quirks to the major league schedule. That two-game set with the Twins April 21-22? It's the only time Minnesota will play in Boston this season. The Sox go out to Minneapolis at the end of May for four games, and we won't see Ron Gardenhire's bunch for the rest of the season.

We will see plenty of the Rays to start the season. Ten of Boston's first 32 games are against Tampa Bay. Add five against the Yankees in that stretch, and the Sox are essentially playing half of their games against their two biggest competitors over the first five weeks of the season.

In September, they have only one home series against either team: a three-game set with the Rays Sept. 11-13. The Yankees don't visit Boston after Aug. 23.

The good news is the Sox won't come close to logging as many frequent-flier miles this season. In 2008, the campaign started with a Fort Myers-Tokyo-Los Angeles-Toronto-Boston swing and never settled down after that. This year, the Sox don't go to the West Coast after May 17 and have only one series outside the Eastern time zone in the final seven weeks.

Of course, every team has its scheduling problems. Truth is, you can easily focus on the games against Tampa and New York while a playoff spot slips away from you. For the first time in years, at least half of the teams in the American League are serious contenders.

In addition to the three teams in the East, Minnesota, Cleveland, Anaheim and Oakland should be in the running for a postseason berth. The Chicago White Sox and Tigers are enigmatic, but could push the top-tier teams.

Of course, the White Sox were snowed out Monday, so Red Sox fans should probably count their blessings. It just seems a nine-game trip to start the season instead of three in chilly Boston before hitting the road would've made a lot more sense.

Tom Caron is the studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on the New England Sports Network. His column appears in the Press Herald on Tuesdays.