It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Everything looks shiny and bright. People are wishing eachother a good and happy season.
No, I’m not talking about Christmas. It’s Major League Baseball opening day, guys.
Today, it’s March 28th, making this Thursday afternoon (1 pm ET) the earliest opening day in American Major League history (technically the season started on the 20th in Japan this year, but today is the official opener for every team). I’m not sure what the reasoning is behind the early jump, other than to possibly give more days off to players and coaches, who will show up at a ballpark 162 times between now and the end of September (163 for players who make their league’s All Star team or compete in the Home Run Derby). This number is a sharp contrast to other sports, for instance football, where teams play one game a week for 17 weeks, with a week off each during the season, for a total of 16 appearances.
But this is not a blog about the difference between football and baseball. However, it should be noted that for baseball players, the season is a literal full-time job, with most teams playing 6 days a week and sometimes as many as 14 days in a row. It is also a full-time job to be a fan. If you miss a week of coverage, you might find that your team has slipped from first to third, and have no idea how that happened. People who play fantasy baseball are wholly consumed by trades and injuries and starting lineups. It takes work to be a true fan.
You could say I’ve been going to work my whole life.
My mother, an avid Red Sox fan for her entire life (a side effect of being raised by a widowed mother in New England who, to my knowledge, never forgot to switch on the radio at 7 pm every evening, all summer) went into labor with her second child on Boston’s opening day in 1985. She was able to finish watching the game in the hospital before delivering me that evening. I was happy, healthy, and addicted to baseball- apparently rearing to make it out in time for my first opening day.
(If we are following this course of reasoning, it makes sense that my sister has never cared much for America’s pasttime- in July of 1983, the Red Sox were halfway through their first losing season since 1966, which they finished at an uninspiring 78-84.)
Before I even started school, I owned and regularly sported a Boston Red Sox cap, could name the entire starting lineup, was collecting my first baseball cards, and had already attended spring training games in Florida. I played tee ball, then co-ed little league, then softball. I listened to games on my radio alarm clock when I was supposed to be asleep in bed. I begged my parents to pay for cable so we could watch the Red Sox at home, in our rural town in western Maine. Major League Baseball expanded in 1993, and Portland got the Sea Dogs, a AA minor league team for the National League’s new Florida Marlins. We somehow ended up with tickets to an autograph night, where we walked onto the infield grass and collected signatures from relative unknowns. To this day, that’s one of my most exciting baseball memories.
In fifth grade, my entire class raised funds to travel to Boston for two days of events and sightseeing that included, most importantly, a Red Sox game. Walking into the stands from Fenway Park’s dirty, green-painted concourse, I almost started crying. I was eleven years old and the entire experience felt like a dream. I learned about rally caps, comeback wins, and what it meant to stand and scream until I lost my voice with a stadium of people who were feeling just as crazy as I was as the Red Sox came from behind to beat the Seattle Mariners. I still have the ticket stub. If the seed had been planted before, the tree was officially growing.
My mother, meanwhile, got to enjoy watching all of this unfold. I’m not sure if she was thrilled or horrified (at the prospect of driving in the city of Boston) when I announced around age 13 that all I wanted for my birthday were Red Sox tickets so she could take me to a game. I asked for the same thing nearly every year for a decade after that.
Once I reached high school, I started reading books about baseball. W.P. Kinsella’s short, magic-realism stories about small phenomenons in fictional baseball leagues of the Midwest drew me in, as did memoirs about fathers and sons, road trips to Cooperstown, ballplayer biographies, and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestseller, Wait Till Next Year. I began to feel a more emotional, nostalgic reverence for the game. I read books and articles about the history of baseball. I purchased the paperback 500-page history of the New York Mets in an airport in New Jersey while on my way to watch Spring Training in 2003 and devoured the entire thing in a week.
When the Jimmy Fallon film “Fever Pitch” was released, it became the running joke amongst my friends, family, and pretty much anyone who had known me for more than an hour that I was going to end up with a man who didn’t love baseball and I would have to adjust. I have always contended that it’s much easier as a woman to meet a man who also loves baseball. As it has turned out, it’s harder than you’d think.
I met a guy in a bar a few years ago and the topic of loving baseball came up. I could only describe my feelings for the game by telling him that “baseball makes me cry.” He nodded thoughtfully and seemed to understand- he is a long-suffering Cubs fan, who also sees the beauty and emotion in the game. (In case you live in a hermit cave and missed it, Cubs fans are no longer suffering, a fact for which I am truly delighted and thankful). So, we can conclude that in my mid-30s, I’ve become a person who starts conversations with strangers in bars by telling them how a professional sport makes me sob. This is all very normal, I promise. (I should also note that we are still good friends, and discuss the finer points of the game on a pretty regular basis. See? No matter what your thing is, I swear your people are out there.)
At 33 years old, I have a Boston Red Sox tattoo on my shoulder (it’s been there for ten years), I drive to Arizona every March to watch the Chicago Cubs in Spring Training (Florida is a plane ride from Colorado. The Cubs are the next best thing, always have been) and I still treat opening day like Christmas. I don’t think I’m likely to ever love any person, or thing, as much as I love the Boston Red Sox, which is a fact that most people in my life have fully accepted by now.
So Happy Opening Day, everyone. May your fly balls be long, your pitches be swift, your feet be fast, and your loved ones be very, very understanding.
