Baseball is back

  

Me, circa 1977. The passion for baseball is still as strong as ever.

It's the most wonderful day of the year. Or at least one of them.

Baseball comes back in parts for me: 1) Major League, 2) High School/Prep School, 3) Minor League, 4) Youth/Summer/Legion. I realize I've left out college (I suppose because nobody seems to want me right now so there's no investment there at the moment).

OK, that's making it a little too involved, but stay with me here. The true kickoff -- the one we really all wait for -- is today. 

Major

League

Frickin' 

Baseball 

Is

BACK!

OK, I know. You hate the runner on second in extra innings and the seven-inning doubleheaders and the pitch clock and the DH or lack of a DH or the AL with the DH and the NL without the DH.

For one minute, shut...up...please!

Today, everyone was 0-0. Hope sat right in front of us.

Yes, the Blue Jays ripped the Yankees' hearts out but it's one day. One of 162.

The Mets and Nationals didn't play due to COVID with Washington and they won't play until Saturday. The Red Sox and Orioles didn't play due to the weather.

But our glorious game was back. When the lineups were introduced at 12:45(ish), very little mattered. When the first pitch was thrown at 1:05 all was right in the world. I wasn't thinking about stupid rules or Rob Manfred.

I might have thought about teams that strike out too much (Yankees, New York) but that's what we're SUPPOSED to think about -- the game. This great and wonderful game that has been my "one constant through the years" (Field of Dreams) was on my TV screen.

I prepared for "Doubleheader" and worked on myriad minutiae as Michael Kay, David Cone, Paul O'Neill, and Meredith Marakovits spoke in the background -- only on YES.

As with last year, when the sport was fighting with itself, we are simply happy to have the game out in front of us where it belongs. We've come so far -- think about it, we really have. Sports, for some of us, has been front and center in helping us have some kind of whatever this is.

We worry about armageddon at the end of the year as the collective bargaining agreement expires and the two sides remind us of what I've been saying for years...

It's a business.

By all accounts, it's going to be bad. But, let's worry about that after it's all over in the fall. For now, let's enjoy it.

For you -- the non-baseball fan -- let me try to teach you this game in a way you've never seen or heard it. Ask me to take you to Cooperstown to explain it's great history. Let me show you why when the nonsense of everyone messing with the sport is stripped away, the simplicity of the lack of a clock, combined with the game literally never being over it's over (paraphrasing one Lawrence P. Berra) gives baseball as much excitement as any sport.

No day like the opening day of baseball season can produce such emotion in me. I love the introductions, the first pitch, the buzz in the ballpark. Seeing the players in the crisp new uniforms for the first time just makes everything seem right. The year is truly in front of us. The snow is gone (except for Detroit) and the temperatures will only improve from here.

Welcome home, baseball, my dear friend of so many years. Six years ago -- Apr 5, 2015 -- I sat down and wrote when some have called one of the best things I've produced here. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't but it was something that flowed very easily from my keyboard that day.

So I'll link it here, with the hope you'll read it. Maybe I can't make you a baseball fan but I hope you'll recognize and understand the passion I have for it and the grip this game has had on me since I was a little boy.

Once again, play ball.