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. You think something
wonderful is going to happen. – Joe DiMaggio
I’ve attended one Opening Day game. And
Joltin’ Joe was right. Something wonderful did happen. It was April 7, 1986 and
I was a senior in high school. My dad had won two tickets by correctly
answering a radio-station trivia question. Over 51,000 packed into Tiger
Stadium for a matchup with the Boston Red Sox. It turned out to be an
unforgettable game. Boston’s Dewy Evans hit Jack Morris’ first pitch for a laser-beam
homer to straight-away centerfield. Morris yielded three more home runs, but
Detroit had Kirk Gibson. He blasted a pair of two-run homers, the second giving
the Tigers the lead for good.
For a baseball fan, Opening Day is like
a wedding anniversary. It’s a celebration of a lifetime of love. We look past
the hurts and disappointments and reminisce over the good times. We renew our
vows and pledge a full season of faithfulness, even if our team will be in the
cellar by Father’s Day. We spring forth with eternal hope, believing that our
team can reach October, despite its shaky rotation and lack of bullpen depth. On
Opening Day something wonderful will happen, baseball returns. Today we
celebrate all that is baseball.
For me, baseball is walking into Tiger
Stadium for the first time as a six-year-old in 1975. From the outside, Tiger
Stadium looked more like an auto plant than a ballpark. Inside, it was dark and
spooky, as if the ghost of Ty Cobb was hiding in a corner. I crossed a catwalk-like
bridge that connected the concourse to the upper deck seats on the third base
side. My knees wobbled as I looked down on the spectators in the field boxes
below me. I exited the darkness through a passageway, nearly blinded by
brilliance of the afternoon sunlight, into a lifetime of love.
Baseball is coming in from mowing the
lawn on a Saturday to watch Mel Allen’s This
Week in Baseball. It’s Dave Parker throwing out Brian Downing at home and
Jim Rice at third in the ’79 All-Star Game. It’s Monday Night Baseball and the
Cubs on TV every afternoon.
Baseball is a George Brett hissy fit,
an Ozzie Smith back flip, and Mark Fidrych playing in the dirt. It’s getting
tucked into bed by the voice of Ernie Harwell and then getting up to check the
newspaper to see who won the game.
It’s little league games on the
Michigan rural fields where you dad was the coach, the league president, and
the architect of the complex’s restrooms. Baseball is your mom confronting an
umpire after a game to tell him she took up a collection so he could buy new
glasses.
Baseball is playing high-school ball at
school so small that anybody with a glove and a pulse made the team. It’s hitting
a pinch-hit grand slam. It’s smashing another homer at the behest of the cutest
classmate this side of Memo Paris.
Baseball is staying up before games
with your best friend to watch The
Natural for the 200th time. It’s Ray Kinsella having a catch
with his dad. It’s books by David Halberstam, George Will, and Roger Kahn. It’s
“Put me in Coach” and “I don’t believe what I just saw!”
Baseball is flying to Seattle and back in
one day just to see Safeco Field. It’s gauging your attendance at a family reunion
in St. Louis on whether the Cardinals are in town. It’s witnessing Andre Dawson
smack three homers on your first visit to Wrigley. It’s a pilgrimage to Fenway and
seeing Roger Clemens strike out 18 batters, as a Blue Jay. It’s road trips to Milwaukee
and Oakland and vacation stadium tours to places like Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
It’s driving from Grand Rapids with a gang of college buddies to see the Tigers
steal the ’87 division crown from Toronto. It’s returning home after years on
the west coast for Tiger Stadium’s last game.
Baseball is having friendships that
traverse both time and geography dating back to the glory days of skinned knees
and grass stains and it’s forging new relationships that are instantly
solidified thanks to years of watching grown men try to hit a round ball with a
round stick.
Baseball is finding the ticket to that
first game at Tiger Stadium. It was a baseball fan’s biggest archaeological
find. It was tucked away in a book, a lost artifact in pristine condition, my
own marriage license, which sealed our National Pastime as my own.
Baseball is front-yard whiffle ball
with dad, using a red, plastic bat as big as a caveman’s club. It’s working on
your fastball as he crouched down like Johnny Bench after a long day’s work. It’s
listening to him explain the infield-fly rule and tell stories about driving to
Cleveland to see Bob Feller beat the Yankees when he was young. It’s watching
games together now for five decades.
Baseball is remembering how he held
your hand as you walked together across that Tiger Stadium catwalk, ushering
not a daughter down the aisle, but a son into a lifetime of wonderful memories,
each as bright and vivid as a cloudless Michigan summer sky.
