Opening Day
Opening Day is a wonderful state of mind, with countless baseball fans recognizing this unofficial holiday as a good reason to call in sick at work or skip from school. My first opening day came in 1973 at the new but now demolished Riverfront Stadium during the era of the Big Red Machine.
My wife and I had just married the fall before and her family had season tickets. For Opening Day, season ticket holders were allotted 8 tickets; the regular 4 behind the Reds dugout accessible to the amenities of the Stadium Club. The other 4, including my seat, were in the upper deck nose-bleed section. But I didn’t care one iota because it was Opening Day and that’s all that mattered. Plus we’d move down to the better seats while my wife’s grandfather, father-in-law and uncles visited the Stadium Club.
Before the game, we caught the tail end of the annual parade in downtown Cincinnati commemorating Opening Day. This year the city celebrated the100th annual parade and the ball club’s 150th anniversary, with Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred serving as grand marshal, with special guest Hall-of-Famer Johnny Bench.
The Reds played the Giants on that 1973 Opening Day, but lost 4-1, eventually winning their division and losing the NLCS in 5 games to the Mets. Here’s the box score and ticket stub for the game:
During the next year’s Opening Day at Riverfront, while the Reds were playing the Braves, Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth’s all time home run record, with newcomer and now Hall-of-Famer Marty Brenneman making the famous call to kick-off his 46 year career broadcasting Reds games. He’s retiring at the end of this season.
I missed that game because by then we had moved to Michigan, where I quickly became a Tiger fan, especially when Sparky Anderson was later fired by the Reds and hired by the Tigers. In April of 1984, I snuck out of work from Ford Motor Company for “a long lunch” and made the short drive to Tiger Stadium for Opening Day, scalping a ticket out front. I was back at work before quitting time and no one, including my boss or wife, were the wiser! The Tigers beat the Minnesota Twins 1-0, leading to a 35-5 start, an AL pennant, World Series and many, many pleasant memories.
Experiencing Opening Day was so special. My third and so far last Opening Day was in the year 2000 for the inaugural game at Detroit’s new Comerica Park. I again snuck out of work to see the game, but since it was the first game in the new stadium, I had absolutely no luck scalping a ticket. So improvising, I was able to watch the game from the Detroit Athletic parking deck beyond centerfield circled in the photo below. It was freezing with snow flurries, but I could stay in my car and watch the game with the heater at full blast, listening on the radio as legendary Tiger announcer Ernie Harwell described the Tiger victory.
Hall-of-Famer Harwell would always lead off each Opening day with the following poem: "For lo' the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. Happy New Year, everybody. It’s time for Tiger Baseball”.
In recent years, it’s been a special treat to get a jump on Opening Day by attending spring training in Florida, and especially this year as the Tigers were playing the Red Sox in Ft. Myers while our son was visiting us for a week. Here’s a selfie at Jet Blue Park with a replica of Fenway’s Green Monster in the background.
Fish Report has been including regular tweets about my cousin Jared Hoying's play with the Hanwha Eagles in the South Korean baseball league. Jared's been playing great so far in this new season. He and his wife Tiffany are expecting their second child this summer.
Some Opening Day quotes from famous Yankee ballplayers:
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
A home opener is always exciting, no matter if it's home or on the road.— Yogi Berra
Since both the Reds and Tigers are in rebuilding mode, it will likely be a long season for both teams, so I plan to read these books between the losses:
Enjoy the season!
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