Former commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti once wrote: “[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”
Today, many feel baseball has broken our hearts all over again. Instead of talking about how many bases Jacoby Elsbury will steal this year, many fans feel that Major League Baseball has stolen our opening day right out from under us. The bright sunshine will be replaced by the moon, blue sky replaced by the stars and the planets and just how can grass look all that green under artificial light?
But for a game that cherishes symbols, an opening on Easter Sunday may help this team to resurrect from it’s less than stellar finish of 2009. How many times over the 86 years did someone mention Fenway Park opened right when reports of the sinking Titanic hit newspapers?
It does not matter what time the game begins; after the magic and the majesty of opening day ceremonies, baseball returns to Fenway tonight. Amid the celebrities and VIP’s, there will be magic in the air. The rains of March will be replaced by sounds of hotdog venders and the crack of the bat. No matter where you are today, you walk with an extra bounce in your step. There is a feeling that tonight, you could conquer the world, and for the Olde Towne Team, this WILL be the year AGAIN!! For tonight is the home opener at Fenway Park.
No doubt, it was the quietest Spring Training possibly in Red Sox history. All the players arrived on time. No one complained. No controversies. It was almost boring. But the thrill of the game is never boring, as we live to listen to the ball thump as it enters the first baseman’s glove and to watch baseballs smashed by the home town team sail over the Green Monster.
Opening Day brings back the magic, the majesty and the dignity that only the game of baseball seems to conjure up. Is it, as Giamatti wrote, because baseball is the only major sport that begins with the start of Spring, or because it is one of the oldest leagues in the country? As flowers bloom, so do rookie players and veteran batting averages.
No matter how you feel about opening on a Sunday night, please remember what is most important: the game. Tonight, somewhere in the ballpark, a child will arrive and see the Green Monster for the first time; it will look much the same as it has for the past 98 years. Wide eyed, the child will watch as Jacoby Ellsbury runs the bases, as Dustin Pedroia makes a double play look easy, and as Kevin Youkilis makes digging a ball out of the dirt look easy. Forget about new menu items like veggie burgers or fruit cups; only popcorn, hot dogs and peanuts will make the experience complete, and every person at the ballpark tonight will look at that child and remember their own first visit to Fenway. The memories will be so thick, it will seem they could be grasped and seized.
As the economy continues to be unstable, and people look for hope during a time when, for so many, it is hard to find, it may be even more timely than ever to remember the words which W.P. Kinsella once wrote: “The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.” The starting time of the game cannot change that, cannot remove the magic, so real, you can almost reach out and touch it. As always, it’s what the home opener at Fenway Park is all about.
- Greg Cunningham
Keywords: Boston Red Sox, Dustin Pedroia, Fenway Park, Kevin Youkilis, Opening Day
