Thoughts on Opening Day

Today we’re all even, and we all have a shot — even when some of us don’t. We’ll be up and we’ll be down, and in seven months we’ll all say it went by too fast

I am writing on the first day of spring in this, year of our Lord 2024. I’m not particularly religious anymore, but I have always wanted to use that in a sentence. And directly on the heels of this new season lies the beginning of the 148th year of professional baseball, 34 of which I have been lucky enough to have shared this planet for.

My brother’s getting married this June to his girlfriend, now fiancé of six years, who he met while recovering from a knee injury sustained while playing softball. An injury that incidentally enough I would suffer myself four years later to the week, doing the same exact thing — playing softball well past my physical prime.

But I digress.

The happy couple has about pinned down the dreaded seating chart with a final empty table to commemorate the memory of our loved ones who have since gone on to the big bleachers in the sky. The way the empty table works, if you aren’t familiar with this newer trend (at least new to me), is that everyone is sat for the wedding reception with the final table being left empty but otherwise occupied by the mementos to recognize hard-nosed grandfathers, holy grandmothers, anxious and well-intending aunts and everyone in-between who are worth remembering in death, making them present to share the big day. In an otherwise hectic family, I find joy in the number of faces that descriptor comprises.

And while sifting through decades of snapshots from the last 60 years, what caught my eye was the astonishingly obvious fact that baseball — playing baseball, and more than anything sharing baseball — has colored the background of so many of those photos. My dad, wearing a Sox jacket that is so 90’s that it hurts ... ball caps at the beach ... ball caps at the game ... and a living flip book of my brother and I alternating between matched and mismatched jerseys, denoting each year that I jumped to the next level of Little League before him.

But my favorite of the pictures felt like a time machine back to a day that I still remember vividly and as clearly as the picture that captured it. My brother and I are patiently sitting on concrete, rocking handmade signs with mismatched colors (in a very 90’s way, itself) spelling out Frank Thomas; I can still remember my dad standing against the closed ballpark gate, winking one eye to frame the right shot, as we awaited our first day of the season. The first kid’s day of the season made kids tickets $1, and more importantly offered the opportunity to any kid who knew their way around the stadium the chance to be the first in line to get their favorite player’s autograph. Those really in the know would tell you that the Big Hurt always signed at the end of the first aisle on the home plate side of the third base dugout, so there we were, steeped in anticipation. And now here I am, writing this some 20-plus years later, awaiting today’s Sox home opener.

I have yet to go to an Opening Day game, but making it to that first game of the year each year feels like Opening Day in its own right. And every year, I am that kid again, aching to get in line on our walk from Ricobene’s. The rise in volume as you approach the park: People clamoring to unpack their cars, parking lot toasts beside a knee-high grill, and the echo of the PA before you even see the diamond. Last week some kid in South Korea, where the L.A. Dodgers took on the San Diego Padres (and our now prodigal son, who hasn’t prodigaled yet, Dylan Cease), took my place as the kid soaking up the ballpark overflowing with the sound of cheers, and the scent of food that tastes better with a ballgame going on in front of you.

In a few weeks it’ll be my turn to re-assume the role and show them how it’s done — after all, I have been at it for a while. And this year I’ll walk beside some new kid, whose sign says “My first baseball game”; I’ll nod at them, and they’ll nod back, and even though they have a ways to catch up and much to learn, we will be in it together.

Alongside those that we remember on the last wedding table, that kid halfway around the world, and whoever else is lucky enough to be alive in 148 years, waiting with his brother for an autograph they’ve waited on all year and luckily, know the fastest way to the exact right aisle.

I love Opening Day; we’re all even, and we all have a shot — even when some of us don’t. We’ll be up and we’ll be down, and in seven months we’ll all say it went by too fast.

Happy Opening Day!