“You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you‘re a kid.” — Joe DiMaggio
Opening Day is Major League Baseball’s high holy day, revered by fans and players, young kids and older folks. It’s a dancing knuckleball of American imagery, symbolizing our swing-for-the-fences national identity. It’s when we once again hear those two magical words that will cast a spell on us for months: “Play ball!”
“There is something special about Opening Day. I just know something great is about to happen,” said Bob Webster, a baseball statistician who writes for the Society for American Baseball Research.
“Regardless what the calendar says or what the weather is like, Opening Day is the first day of spring. It’s the first day of the season with something going on every day for the next seven months. It is also the day I wish everyone a Happy New Year,” said Webster, a former Chicago White Sox fan who’s now a longtime Chicago Cubs fan.
After weeks of uncertainty, Thursday is Opening Day for most teams including the Cubs, who play at Wrigley Field against the Milwaukee Brewers. The White Sox open their season Friday in Detroit against the Tigers. For the first time in league history, a 12-team playoff field will give teams — and their fans — a greater chance of winning the pennant.
It all starts with Opening Day, which allows us a much needed seventh-inning stretch from our busy or worrisome lives.
“It feels like all of the really exciting plays that I have ever seen are going to be matched every year on Opening Day,” said Webster, who grew up in Michigan City and now lives in Portland, Oregon, where his home is a shrine to the sport he worships.
“I have watched many baseball games in my life, but now and then I still see something happen that I have never seen before. Some are good, some are bad, and some are just very odd and entertaining,” he said.
Ballparks will be packed. Fans will be jacked. And every team starts with zero losses and infinite hopes. Baseball continues to round the bases in our hearts and dreams, just as it did more than 175 years ago when its first published rules were written. It’s a game that became a sport, and a sport that has endured time.
Let’s put it this way. If Rip Van Winkle woke up on Opening Day, baseball may be the only thing he fully understands in our world. He definitely wouldn’t understand the prices to watch professional athletes play a sandlot kid’s game in front of millions of fans. The most expensive ballpark experience this year — including cost of a ticket, parking, food and drink — will be at Wrigley Field, according to a new analysis by Time2Play.com.
“We wanted to find out the general differences baseball fans would notice, especially in their wallets, when heading to a game in 2022 and assess overall comfortability with the ongoing pandemic,” the site states.
Yankee Stadium comes in second, followed by Fenway Park in Boston. The least expensive ballparks for home games are played by the Arizona Diamondbacks, Miami Marlins, and Tampa Bay Rays, the analysis concluded. Whichever ballpark fans visit, the same realization awaits them: a major league game is an “event” compared to a minor league game, which is a “ballgame.”
“Going to a major league game is like going to a music concert,” Webster said. “You plan in advance. It is a big deal. There are fewer times of sneaking out of work early and heading down to Wrigley Field at a moment’s notice.”
He asked if I remember attending games at Wrigley before the Tribune Company bought the Cubs in 1981, when up to 22,000 seats went on sale the day of the game for kids who skipped school or working people who could sneak away from their job.
“Good times,” he recalled.
I certainly do. I ditched school like a player tossing his bat after hitting a homer. My friends and I would pack ourselves into a ’77 Chevy Nova or ’74 Plymouth Fury and make the drive into Chicago for afternoon games. “Go ahead Mr. Principal, give us detention, we didn’t care!” we told each other.
I also remember one Opening Day from my seat in the last row. Unfortunately, that seat wasn’t at Wrigley but in the back of Mr. Sanchez’s social studies class at Kennedy-King Junior High School in Gary. I listened to the game using a tiny earphone connected to a hidden transistor radio (remember those?) in my oversized CPO jacket (remember those?).
That’s how important Opening Day was to me. I would risk getting painful swats (remember those?) for tuning in to the Cubbies’ first game of the season. There’s no crying from swats either.
“But Didn’t We Have Fun?” is the title of one of my favorite books about baseball. It’s an informal history of baseball’s pioneer era, authored by Peter Morris, who puts things in perspective for fans and non-fans alike.
“If I were to tell you that hopscotch was going to be a professional sport in 30 years and men would earn a living playing hopscotch, you would laugh and you would say, well, that’s ridiculous,” Morris said. “But that’s exactly what happened with baseball.”
This is the childlike beauty of baseball, its first game of the season, and two words that illustrate our excitement — “play” and “ball.”
