It would be a great improvement to the tournament experience to do away with starting games at 8am. The sun is still too low blinding the hitters or even worse the Pitchers & IFs.
The OF grass is still wet so the balls get wet & heavy increasing the likelihood of breaking yet another $200 Ultra 2.
And having to get up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready & get to the field on time can be a real problem for a lot of players & their wives, families, etc.
More often than not there are open fields & plenty of daylight left when the tournaments are done for the day around 6pm on Saturday so why not start at 9am when the sun is out of everyone's eyes & the grass has a had a chance to dry out?

that's too logical, isn't it? a couple of years ago at the winter nationals in fort myers/naples we played a 9am game, sunshine directly over centerfield. as a hitter you could not see the ball, you could only hope to guess where it might end up. there were 11 or 12 strikeouts (called or swinging) that game. it certainly was one of the least favorite or fun games that i have ever played in. the ironic part is if on that particular diamond they started at 10am the sun would not have been a issue, since by the last inning it had moved enough to not be a factor anymore.

I agree. I would reather have starting times up to 5:00 PM than need to get up and out before hotels serve breakfest. Two tourneys this year - we were done by 3:00 PM or so and the fields were open. One cost us all the finsih of the tourney due to rain on Sunday - Deleware! And they knew it was going to rain but did nothing to change the schedule either on Friday or Sat.

Lets face it; when we travel I think most of us like to go out for dinner and have a few drinks as a team. Who wants to get up that early to warm up for an 8:00 AM game.

I am in total agreement with that. We could start at 10 a.m. and the last game would be 6:30. Especially in Reno when it is still going to be pretty cold at 8 a.m.

At last years Winterworlds in Vegas we had 8am games all three days. Tough to enjoy a little of Vegas when you have to get up at 5.30am every day.