Brian Manzullo

Detroit Free Press

The Boston Red Sox have a brutal turnaround coming up later this week.

They have to play the finale of a 2-game set against the Baltimore Orioles at 7 p.m. Wednesday, then fly to Detroit for a 1:10 p.m. game against the Tigers at Comerica Park.

So president Dave Dombrowski and the Red Sox contacted his former team and requested to push back the start time to later in the afternoon or evening. It's the Tigers' decision to honor that request -- and they didn't, according to a report from Boston Herald writer Michael Silverman.

In such situations, it’s customary for the road team to first request the home team on the getaway day – in this case, the Orioles – to move the game-time.

The Tigers have six Thursday games scheduled this season. All start at 1:10 p.m., continuing a tradition of popular weekday matinee games that started years ago. While a series-opening Thursday day game is not the norm – most are getaway days – the Tigers have played one at Comerica Park in each of the past two seasons.

More from Silverman:

The Tigers have some prior history of Thursday afternoon starts. Another part of their history is that Red Sox president Dave Dombrowski was relieved of his duties as Detroit general manager last summer. Is this some kind of a less-than-fond farewell card from the Tigers? Al Avila, bumped up to GM after serving as Dombrowski’s assistant, said yesterday that he doesn’t set game times. A request to speak with another Tigers executive yesterday went unanswered. Maybe this has nothing to do with Dombrowski. But it still feels like a bush-league move. And if you think the Tigers jimmied the schedule to gain an edge, you can read the mind of Dombrowski. “They traditionally have played Thursday afternoons during the season, although they don’t always play (then) because if the roles were reversed, I’m sure they would have played a night game,” Dombrowski said. “And I’m sure they did it in some ways because they realized we would come in as a tired club, that they did it from a competitive perspective. Unfortunately we didn’t have any rights to get it changed.”

Maybe it's competitive gamesmanship on the Tigers' part. They're 63-54, fives games behind the Cleveland Indians for the American League Central lead, but they're also 1.5 games behind the Red Sox for the second AL Wild Card spot.

The Tigers may also want to avoid playing a game Thursday night because, across the street at Ford Field, the Detroit Lions play their second preseason game against the Cincinnati Bengals at 7:30 p.m.

In 2014, the Tigers pushed up their game-time on Monday, Sept. 8 against the Royals to 4 p.m. to accommodate local fans while the Lions opened their season against the Giants on Monday Night Football.

Thursday's game begins a 4-game series between the Tigers and Red Sox at Comerica Park.

Contact Brian Manzullo: bmanzullo@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrianManzullo.

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