Opening Day lives at the metaphorical intersection of Hope and Faith. If every day were Opening Day, nobody would ever need an alarm clock. Opening Day is the first day of the rest of our lives.
For my next cliché…
What the Day is: Renewal, optimism and a rare demonstration of civic one-ness. Who doesn’t love a parade? Or, this year, the idea of a parade.
What the Day isn’t: Central to what baseball is all about: A 162-game grind in which little moments are cause for celebration. What matters more: A walk-off home run in Game 1? Or two diving, run-saving catches on consecutive nights in August when the Reds win twice by one run?
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The great ex-Red Scott Rolen wondered why Baseball didn’t celebrate its division champions more. Winning steadily across 162 contests, Rolen reasoned, is harder to do than winning one time, or four times out of seven.
Man had a point. Opening Day is Game 7 for everyone. In Cincinnati, Opening Day is an occasion marked by pomp, circumstance and lots of attendees who won’t go to another game all year. That’s not to begrudge the OD People. Certainly, the fact baseball is back and a daily presence in our lives for the next six months is fantastic. After last year, I will never again assume baseball’s comforts.
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Baseball truth is revealed slowly, its flavor enhanced only through a months-long marination. Long after Opening Day’s sugar buzz is done, the game’s essence is still slow-cooking.
Give me a warm, clear night in July, sitting in the View Level in right field, the moon over my right shoulder. I’ll take a Sunday afternoon in August, the hotter the better, when I ditch the press box for a seat in the Sun Deck in left.
I’ve said this many times: The season truly begins with Game 2, a night game in the impossible cold where 12,000 fans sit mummified in blankets. That’s hardball. Those fans are seeing Game 1 of the season-long struggle, not partaking in some undeclared holiday enjoyed by people who couldn’t pick Eugenio Suarez out of a lineup.
They are those for whom the game is a daily devotion. Who can tell you why it matters that Joey Votto has changed his hitting approach and that Amir Garrett’s exuberance defines him, and his pitching. They know, as July strolls into August, that the Reds still have a shot if they stay healthy, even as they’re eight games behind the heathens from St. Louis.
Will Sonny Gray’s currently sore back go away? Will Castellanos, Moustakas and Akiyama – we are the world, we are the children – validate the big hope that last year was a 60-game aberration? Will the aforementioned Eugenio Suarez break George Foster’s single-season Reds homerun record of 52?
“Good vibes only’’ is Suarez’s stated mantra. Will it be ours in September?
Time will tell and time isn’t measured on Opening Day. The clock’s not even wound.
Is it heresy to soft-peddle the opener? Is it?
Then how come the Reds don’t draw 40,000 every game? (Or this year, 12,000.) Is baseball worthy of our undivided attention only one game a year? Between Game 2 and Oct.1, the Club will come close to selling out only a few times. At least one of those times will feature a bobblehead giveaway.
By mid-July, Saint Joe Burrow will have marched back in. A month or so later, the kids will be back in school. If the Reds aren’t fully relevant, the masses of Opening Day will be disguised as empty seats. We claim to love baseball like a spouse around here, but we don’t always show up.
Like much of life, Opening Day works best as a concept. Nothing wrong with that. Here’s hoping the Reds conspire to make the first-day concepts linger all season long.
That’s hardball. The rest is cosmetics.
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