Opening Daze

Today was the first day of a long journey. For the next seven months, I’ll look at the results of what my friends do every day. I’ll watch the stats, the streaks, and the slumps.

I’ll rejoice with every success, and lament every setback. It’s a marathon of hills and valleys, with emotional highs and lows ripe with memories just waiting to be enjoyed.

I’ll be watching baseball.

No, I don’t know them personally. But I feel like I do. I watch their tendencies, their mannerisms, and their progress. I know where they hit in the line up, their position on the field, their batting averages, their earned run averages, and many of their ages.

I’ve been a fool for this game for over fifty years. I don’t know what it is, but today when I heard them play the National Anthem, and saw the Air Force fly over the field, followed by the highlight film of the Rangers championship years, I got choked up.

It’s Opening Day.

I own two teams. Not literally, but make no mistake. These are my teams. The Texas Rangers are my home team now, but my home town team with whom I grew up is the Cincinnati Reds.

Both teams have provided me with wonderful memories of winning seasons and post-season heroics. Though naysayers are quick to smirk and scoff if your teams aren’t winning today, it will not deter my love for the game, but will only further prove that these schmucks are not true baseball fans, but merely noisy, fair weather impostors.

One of the many things I love about baseball, is if you lose today, you get another shot tomorrow. Day after tomorrow at the latest. It’s like the game of the second chance.

And there’s no time limit in baseball. It’s not over until the losing team gets out twenty seven times. Twenty seven!

There are so many games, even the worst teams are still mathematically eligible for the playoffs until at least September.

It’s a summer game, played at an easy pace, punctuated with sudden thrills of miraculous athleticism and heated competition. It is the National Pastime rich with history and folklore.

So here we go! Between now and Halloween I’ll be a little distracted. I have a lot of victories in which to revel, too many heart-breaking losses to endure, as well as multiple sparkling defensive plays to watch on replay.

And hopefully many walk-off home runs to celebrate.

The latter example is my favorite of all. When that batter hits the ball over the fence in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the game, and trots around the bases to thunderous applause, it’s a magical moment that’s as emotional as it is rare.

The best part of all is the group of guys waiting for him at home plate. When that runner’s foot hits the plate, and the whole team swarms him, and starts jumping up and down like a bunch of kids, it is truly a moving moment.

That’s a microcosm of what this game does for me. It has the uncanny knack to make me feel like the boy from Groesbeck, Ohio again. The right fielder for Stacy Storage and Moving. The team that even though went 0-12 our first season, was my team, and they were my pals.

Perhaps that futile first season was good for me. Maybe it helped me to learn character, and appreciation for when the wins did come. I learned how special championships really are, and how few people actually get to experience them.

The familiar refrain at the end of the season for every team but one is: “Maybe next year”. And while this phrase does provide a bittersweet ray of hope, the extra special motto of Opening Day is:

“Maybe THIS year!”