MLB Opening Day has come. In just a few short hours national anthems will be performed around ballparks from coast to coast in this great nation. Francisco Liriano will take the hill at PNC Park in Pittsburgh as the Pirates take on one of America’s darlings, the Chicago Cubs, to get opening day going.
Baseball. It’s America. Passed on from generations of the past to kids of tomorrow. This nation wouldn’t be the same if this game surrounding a small round ball, 90 feet of dirt and and wood wasn’t created centuries ago. In many ways, the sport of baseball has followed us from the darkest times to the brightest of times. It has helped us, at least for a time, forget about the reality of the world we live in. Always in the backdrop of our lives as Americans, baseball has been there with us through it all.
It’s not just a sport…it’s part of our fabric as a nation.
Outside of that, here are some other reasons why we are romantic about baseball.
The Echoes of the Past
From the first organized baseball game ever played at Hoboken’s Elysian Fields in 1846 to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. From the Boston Red Sox selling Babe Ruth for $125,000 to Mazeroski’s home run. From Roger Maris’ 61 in 1961 to Rickey Henderson considering himself the greatest ever. From Don Larsen’s perfect game to Pete Rose passing Ty Cobb. From Babe Ruth’s final appearance at Yankees Stadium to Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech…
Baseball has always been a game of history. It transcends the sports world simply because of exactly how it has helped define us as a people. The Maris/Mantle home run battle as a backdrop to America’s involvement in Vietnam. Lou Gehrig’s speech during the earliest stages of World War 2. Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier during the height of racial indifference in the south. All these are examples of baseball giving us, as a people, an avenue to forget about the calamities we are facing.
Now archived on video and in photos, this history will forever be with us. As those who witnessed it first hand die off, we won’t only be left with the memories as they were told to us and our parents. We will be able to live it as if we were a part of it. This is baseball, this is our shared history.
October
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXPJK4FO7Hg
I dare you to find a more dramatic moment in sports than Game 7 of a MLB playoff series. With everything on the line and after 170-plus games have been played over six months, it comes down to this. One game separating those who we will go down in the history books from those who we will quickly forget the following day.
It’s that one moment in time where time itself stops. Edgar Renteria as the unsung hero for the then Florida Marlins in 1997. Luis Gonzalez taking on the best closer in the history of baseball and defeating the New York Yankees at home in a series that pitted one of the oldest franchises in baseball against one of the newest.
Majestic is the best term to use when thinking about October baseball. For me, it was this one moment during the 1992 playoffs that will forever be embedded in my memory.
For others, it will be Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS in which the Boston Red Sox both overcame the curse of Babe Ruth and became the first team in MLB history to come back from a 3-0 series deficit to defeat the hated New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium in that decisive final game.
Either way, there is nothing better than October baseball. Well….
Opening Day
The smell is different. That’s pretty much the only explanation I can come up with from a sense standpoint. Once MLB Opening Day rolls around, usually in early April, we are ready to turn the page from a dark, bleak winter and embark upon a spring and summer filled with baseball, barbecues, fairs, trips to the beach, summer holidays, vacations and hot summer days.
In many ways, opening day is a turning of a calendar page for us Americans. As a kid, it represented a day in which school came closer to ending and we could get out baseball gloves out, place them under our bed to get worn in and run outside with our best friends to play a game of stick ball. I know that sounds corny, but you can’t tell me you don’t miss those days.
The Bond
Whether its father and son, mother and daughter, mother and son, father and daughter…the bond that MLB brings with it is second to none in the sports world. It enables us to have relationships with our parents growing up at a time when said relationship might have been during those awkward years. Run out of something to talk about, bring up the last time your team won the World Series or, in some cases, the last bitter disappointment you two shared.
In the stands, it’s also one of those bonds that are hard to express in words. Unlike other sports, there is a lot of down time in baseball. Whether it’s between pitches, during trips to the mound or in between innings, fans converse and chat among themselves. It’s more of a homey atmosphere than other major sports, which is one of the primary reasons that it’s so different. Oh and it’s also not timed, as I remember clearly last year when the Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Angels played a 19-inning affair that last over six hours last April.
The Cathedrals
Unlike any other sport in America, some of the stadiums that host baseball games today take on an extra significance. It’s the history and the idea of what happened at that specific location during a time and space decades before.
In the words of the late-great Bart Giammatti…
As I grew up, I knew that as a building (Fenway Park) was on the level of Mount Olympus, the Pyramid at Giza, the nation’s capitol, the czar’s Winter Palace, and the Louvre — except, of course, that is better than all those inconsequential places.
While old Yankee Stadium has given ground to a crappier version of its former self, we still have Fenway Park and Wrigley Field to lay claim to. Nearly 200 years of combined baseball has been played at these two venues. Some of the greatest moments in the history of the game itself. Some of the darkest moments for each fan base as well.
Cooperstown, a memorial to the greatness that proceeded us. A bastion for those of us willing to let time stop in order to pay homage to those who came before. The feeling of utter amazement when checking out the history of this game we love. Sorry Canton, you got nothing on this place.
Enjoy opening day, guys and gals. It comes around only once a year and will help you make memories that will last a lifetime.
I’ll leave it to Klinger from “MASH” to sum it up best…
A good cigar is like a beautiful chick with a great body who also knows the American League box scores.
Now that’s romantic.
Photo: Peter G. Aiken, USA Today