I’m sure this starting the baseball season in Japan is a great idea because Bud Selig would never approve anything that isn’t good for the game, would he?

So it’s got to be the greatest thing since remote control that A-Rod and Jeter will take the field for the first time together in an official game in Tokyo. And Yankee fans, who have waited all winter to see how great the latest edition of the best team money can buy, should consider it a patriotic privilege to watch the game at 5 a.m. ET.

Just because baseball is America’s pastime, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t share it with another country, especially one on the other side of the planet. And what better place to officially open the season than in Japan, where they have a professional league of their own. So Japan gets not one, but two opening days -– theirs and ours. That sure is generous of Selig.

I know baseball has been opening in Japan for awhile. I put up with it when teams like the Mets were going over, mostly because I didn’t mind if they didn’t come back.

But it was never a good idea, no matter how many tickets they sell in Japan and no matter how many Japanese tune into Yankees and Mariners broadcasts. If you have to play in Japan -– and everybody with the exception of the NHL does -– then play a preseason series there like the NFL does.

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Opening the season in any country other than the two in which major league baseball is played is an insult to the fans who support the game. Opening day is a big deal, darned near a national holiday. It’s a day when you call in sick to work or sneak out early, a day to cut school, a day when uniforms are spotless and everyone’s batting average is .000 and everything is possible.

For the Yankees, it’s an opener that no fan would miss. Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter and Gary Sheffield are batting in the same order. It’s a new pitching staff, a slimmer Jason Giambi, Kenny Lofton in center. And they’re playing Tampa, the team managed by former Yankee player and manager Lou Piniella. Sitting next to Sweet Lou on the Tampa bench will be Don Zimmer, Joe Torre’s bench coach until Zim finally reached his Steinbrenner limit and walked out.

And if you want to see it, you have to be sitting in front of the tube at 5 in the morning. Now, isn’t that special?

Some fans will make the best of it. They’ll get up ultra-early and go to one of the bars that are opening early so that people can watch the game at 5 a.m. They won’t be able to have a beer while they’re watching -– at least not for an hour or two, and not then if they have to go to work afterwards.

From the Tampa Bay perspective, it’s a double insult. Besides having to get up at 5 if they want to see it, Devil Ray fans also get stiffed two home games. Maybe if you want to save on season tickets, it’s a good thing that the Rays are the home team for two games in Tokyo. And some would say the fewer games Tampa plays the better.

But if you’re a season-ticket buyer and the team is going to play only 79 at home instead of 81, the last two games you’d want to lose are two Yankee games. If you live in Tampa Bay, the odds are good you once lived in the Northeast.

Of course, Selig would never take two home games away from the Yankees. George Steinbrenner wouldn’t stand for it, no matter what baseball pays him for going to Japan. So Selig is telling Tampa Bay fans they’re not as important as Yankee fans. Either that, or it’s cheaper to pay Tampa for two missing home dates than it is to pay the Yankees.

It’s not just the fans who get hosed. Less than a week before the opener, the players were in Florida. Now they’re in a place where night is day and day is night. They’re being subjected to as serious a case of jet lag as you can have.

They’re young and they adjust quickly, but sleep scientists have known for decades that it takes one day for each hour of time change for your system to completely adjust. It will be two weeks before everyone who goes on the trip is operating at peak efficiency. You’d hate to have a season decided on games a team lost in April because it was recovering from a trip to Japan.

Then there’s the lunacy that goes on after these two games. They’re the official beginning of the season. But, once they’re played, the two teams come back to play two more exhibition games before meeting for the real home opener for Tampa a week later.

So first we play two real games, then two exhibitions, then we play real games again. All so Bud Selig can say he sold out the Tokyo Dome and filled the Japanese papers with Hideki Matsui stories.

It’s a bad idea, but Selig is dedicated to it. So next year, instead of depriving the most famous franchise of its opening day, send a couple of teams no one cares about to start with. Like Montreal. And Milwaukee. Maybe he can work it so they stay there.

Maybe he’ll stay with them.