Detroit's Holiday

Well, the Detroit Tigers lost the second game of a twin bill to the Mets yesterday, 2-1. They were the last undefeated team in MLB to fall this year and are now five wins against that one loss. So it goes. The Tigers weren't going to go 162-0 anyway. 

After six road games Detroit is now home for Opening Day against the A's. I'm not sure we can call them Oakland, now that they're heading to Sacramento for three, or four, or who really knows how many seasons. But that's another question for another day.

Baseball owns Opening Day. For lo, the winter is past. Spring is here and all is new. Baseball opens us up to summer. Sure, football is trying to horn in with the UFL. Let the 12 people who watch that have their fun. We know the real national pastime, and it begins again this afternoon a little after 1 in the D. I intend to catch it.

Opening Day 2024

This is it: the real, one and only, true Opening Day in all of sports. Major League Baseball begins today. Well, other than the two games played in Korea last week. But let's not quibble.

Anaheim at Baltimore start it off at 3:05. My own Detroit Tigers face the Chicago White Sox in Chi town at 4:10. It's on.

Predictions? I won't make any even though it's expected. Everyone's a World Series contender on Opening Day and I won't spoil it. Let's simply enjoy the beginning of 162 games of the best sport there is, bar none. Baseball. The national pastime. 

Let Summer roll.

Wither Baseball

All sports carry within them grains of absurdity. I mean that. That doesn't make them wrong; it doesn't take any fun away from them. Yet the absurdities, be honest, exist. I'll use my beloved baseball, the world's greatest game, for an example.

Let's have two people, we'll call them Cloyce and Boyce to give them names, standing out in a field. Cloyce has a ball in his hands. He begins to ruminate. Eventually he instructs Boyce, "Go stand over there, maybe sixty feet away from me."

"Why should I do that?" Boyce, reasonably enough, asks.

"I'm going to throw this ball towards you."

Boyce demands, "You're going to hit me with that ball?"

"No, no, no," Cloyce assures his friend. "Towards you, that's all. But hold that thought about hitting you. Maybe if my throw is too close we might invent dodgeball. But I won't throw at you, only towards you."

"What's in it for me?" the every prescient Boyce responds.

Momentarily uncertain, Cloyce soon says, "Pick up that stick over there. Now, when I throw the ball towards you, you swing that stick and try to hit it. If I get it past you, good for me."

"All right," Boyce allows skeptically, "But what if I hit it? What exactly am I trying to do?"

Growing just a bit exasperated and impatient Cloyce says, "You see Fred way out behind me?"

"Yeah."

"You have to hit it past him."

"What?" Boyce cries out incredulously. "He's maybe 400 feet away!"

"Just try. It'll be fun." 

Boyce, beginning to appreciate the logic of it, says, "Okay. And if I manage to I win, right?"

Cloyce can't see any way his buddy can do it. Yet he adds a wrinkle just the same. Putting four rocks, including one at Boyce's feet, into a diamond shape he instructs, "No. You drop the stick and run, touching each rock until you touch them all."

Boyce then started to lose incentive. "I think I need to go home and paint my house or something."

"Don't do that. Fred'll chase the ball and throw it back to me while you run the, run the, bases. Yes, bases."

"So?" 

"So if I catch the ball from Fred," Cloyce patiently explains, "I'll try to touch you with it before you touch all four rocks. If I do, I win. If I don't, you do."

Pondering the idea for a moment, Boyce finally says, a wide smile growing across his face, "All right, Cloyce, I'm in. But only if I get 27 chances at it."

Boyce never got his house painted. He had a new passion.

Opening Day 2021

Yesterday the baseball season began, and thankfully it was no cruel April Fools Day joke. 13 of the 15 scheduled games were played. Hopefully we can get an entire season in, with increasing attendance.

I got in from a road trip in time to catch most of the Tigers first game, followed by the end of the Toronto-New York Yankees match. In the best tradition of organized sports I will offer my first objection to new rules: I do not like, I do not like at all, starting extra innings with a runner already on second base. It takes away from the last at bat advantage, among other things. But more unwanted analysis on that later. This is a time to be happy and excited that baseball is back.

On that front, to use the stilted but clever and funny verbiage of cartoonist Nathan Pyle, my regional orbcatchers are 1-0 and on a pace to finish 162-0. It's a good feeling. An Opening Day kind of feeling. 

Everyone is in contention, on Opening Day, to win the World Series. And as my beloved Detroit Tigers won and have today off before playing game two of the 2021 Season tomorrow, I get to bask in that glow. Too soon the inevitable alternate reality, the alternate reality which comes, sadly, to 29 of the 30 MLB teams each year, sets in.

Let it wait until Saturday. Or, God willing, Sunday. Or maybe, just maybe, until the final out of the 2021 World Series is made. That is the ultimate hope of Opening Day.

Opening Day 2018

This afternoon at about 1:10 Eastern time at Comerica Park in Detroit (I almost said Tiger Stadium there in wishful thinking), Jordan Zimmerman will throw out the first real pitch of the 2018 MLB Season. The true American national pastime will be underway.

Opening Day in baseball eclipses opening day in any other sport. Sure, the fans of those other games games revel in the beginning of their seasons, and that's okay. To each their own. But their games don't hold a candle to our game.

The mystique of baseball is greater than the, well, I won't call what other sports have mystique. They have sheer brutality as in American football, and that is hardly a plus. Others may have speed, but that again is not the same as acumen, and acumen, true athletic ability, is what baseball has in abundance. The other big games simply don't have that.

Don't bother with complaints about baseball taking too long. Basketball is interminable particularly in its closing moments, and football has gotten that way too. All major sports other than soccer take 3-4 hours to play. Baseball is no slower, nor faster, than they are. Hell, I quit watching basketball years ago simply because the last 30 seconds take a half hour to play.

Baseball lets us enjoy the game. It is leisurely, even quaint perhaps, yet excitement still builds as we wait for the pitch or watch the action as men speed around the bases and fielders perform relays. And at least for today, my beloved Detroit Tigers are in first place.

Baseball is Back for 2012

What could be more American than baseball? And today is Opening Day, that feast of baseball excess which leads us into spring and summer days of sun and fun.

The Detroit Tigers take on the Boston Red Sox at Comerica Park this afternoon at 1:05, officially inaugurating the 2012 season locally. The sun is expected to be shining and, although it will be on the chilly side, the hearts of Detroiters will be warmed by the glow of the National Pastime.

Let the fans of the other major sports, especially the footballers, say what they will; baseball is the game of Americans. It was played as recreation during lulls in the Civil War. It was played in earlier forms during the colonial and revolutionary periods of our history. It is provincial, and that is one of its key strengths. So more people may watch the Super Bowl; that's merely because it is one game, and many if not most watchers are more concerned with the party than the athletic event anyway. But baseball fans watch the World Series more intently when their team is involved. No fair weather fans there. No false fans untrue to their locale as with so many Super Bowl and even BCS 'fans'.

What's more, it's the game which best displays the natural conservatism of Americans. Everyone plays as a team but also has to go out there as an individual; you field, where your prowess depends upon your skill but also your teammates positioning and anticipation. You bat or pitch, which gives you the chance to produce on your own. It's Americana at its best.

Welcome, baseball! Welcome, harbinger of the bright days of summer! Welcome back, National Pastime! We have the summer to ourselves, unspoiled by those other games, those pretenders to our hearts. Baseball is America, baseball is back, and go Detroit Tigers!