A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again*

Yesterday was Opening Day in Baltimore.

For those of you that haven't experienced an Opening Day--my life has been blessed with attending all but a tiny handful of Opening Days in Detroit and Baltimore--it is the greatest day of the year, without exception. Sure, individual events may surpass it--a particularly important sports game or championship; a wonderful trip or night out; that one time when you found that nice sweatshirt that you thought you lost, but there is was in some bag that you hadn't used in over a year, and then found $20 in the pocket--but there is no other day of the year that will be as reliably spectacular as Opening Day.

It has everything. The start of baseball season. The beginning of spring. Hot Dogs. Time with your family and friends before, during and after the game. Sure, sometimes it may be really damn cold, or raining or blustery, but with every Opening Day comes a duplicitous sense of hope.

This is the year my team can do it.
Winter's death grip shall finally be released.

When you grow up in a place like Michigan, that second point can't be understated.

So yeah, I treat Opening Day as a holiday, a proud family tradition dating back to my grandpa taking my mom and her brothers to Opening Day at Tiger Stadium. Every year he would tell the stories about how he would call in to their school and inform the receptionist that they wouldn't be coming in today. "They have a previous engagement."

Now I'm lucky enough to work for a company that literally shuts down to go to Opening Day. So just imagine my joy when I learned that my team--The Tigers--were going to be in Baltimore for the Orioles' Opening Day. Oh, there was joy.

But I was wrong. It was wrong.

Opposing fans should not be allowed at Opening Day. They should be banned. Removed at the gate. Stricken from the crowds.

I say this not because opposing fans are obnoxious, or rude or even a distraction to the home fans--I saw very few Tigers fans today and of those that I did see before, during and after the game they were non-entities. No. I say this because it simply shouldn't be. Opening Day is a sacred event. To not root for the home team is sacrelige. Hell, it's in the damn defining song about baseball, the entire lyrics of which are basically a narrative of opening day. Root, root, root for the Home Team

So here I was, watching my favorite team play on Opening Day in one of my favorite ballparks, and from time to time I couldn't help but think I shouldn't be here. Or, more specifically, if I'm going to be here I should be rooting for the Orioles. I have never felt that before, and I have been to many games in many sports as an opposing fan.

Was Opening Day a loss? A bust? No, of course not. It was Opening Day, and I love Opening Day. But this one was different. I was an intruder who somehow managed to slip through the cracks.

That's why I'm so excited to go back tomorrow. With Opening Day over, the baseball season can begin. Go Tigers.


*Full credit to my lovely wife and actual reader of ASFTINDA for suggesting a title vastly superior to whatever it was I had originally named this post, which I literally forgot the moment I heard her suggestion because it erased everything else from my mind with its superiority. Also, this post was in no way meant to evoke David Foster Wallace, or be written in the style of DFW or anything. I haven't read his stuff and despite wanting to, a full life with classes and lack of a kindle or similar doesn't make lugging around a 1400 page copy of Infinite Jest seem imminent.

Home O-pener

I am literally the most excited person in Baltimore today. It's the Orioles home opener, which has become an annual tradition for my wife and I and they are playing the Tigers. On Opening Day.

More good times:

- If you're familiar with a Baltimore accent say "Home Opener." It's a blast. You'll be saying it all day.

- Luke Scott pulled his groin and won't make it back until Wednesday, at the earliest. This is spectacular news for Tigers fans (For why, see "Tiger Killer Kills Tigers" and "Why I blog, Luke Scott Edition") To echo @sabrerosetiger on twitter the O's should probably just sit him for the whole week just to be safe. Please.

-Yesterday Brennan Boesch did a lot of this:


For those of you without a keen baseball eye, that is a picture of him doing awesome things with the bat. Yesterday it was to the tune of 4 hits, including a home run 4 runs and 4 RBIs. His partner in prolific offensive production was none other than...


It is Opening Day. He will play like a star. It's in the cards (!)

For the rest of you Tigers fans, enjoy your mundane sandwich series between the true opener and the home opener. Me, I'll be sporting all my Tigers gear down at Camden Yards, whereupon I will be mercilessly harassed by the large swaths of ignorant O's fans that show up for 1) Opening Day 2) No other games*. It will be miserable right up to the point where the Tigers beat the undefeated Orioles, at which point I will quietly make my way home, careful to avoid large, belligerent crowds.

*It should be noted that I do not find actual Orioles fans to be ignorant. In fact, they are among the better fans in the game--not surprising if they've stuck with it for this long. The specific subset of fans to which I'm referring are the large drunk masses of people who care about Opening Day, but not about the O's and are intolerable on every level. For the other 364 days of the year they are known as Ravens fans.

Opening Day Is Go

Tigers vs. Yankees in the first game of the season on ESPN.

Go.

Opening Day Jr.

For the Tigers, today is the Opening Day of their 2010 Spring Training schedule, kicking things off with a game against Florida Southern. I've gotta say, I'm very excited to see how this spring training works for the Tigers. There is a lot of talent and even more question marks and it might take the entirety of their 35 game exhibition schedule to figure out just who is going to actually make up their 2010 squad.

Anyway, I figure today gives me as a good a chance as any to show off what came in the mail last week:

2006 Topps #ODR-RT Tigers vs. Royals GU Base

I think that this card is really neat. One, I love Opening Day (the real opening day). I went to every Tigers Opening Day of my life but two (yes, I even traveled back to Michigan from Baltimore to go twice). It holds a very, very special place in my heart. So, give me a card that commemorates the greatest day of the year and I'm happy. Slap on the Opening Day logo, which I'm a sucker for, for some reason, and you get bonus points. But this card is different. It is one of the few types of Relic Cards that I really get excited about. This is a piece of the base used during the 2006 Opening Day. That's cool. Have you ever touched a GU Base card? Way better than a Jersey swatch.

Back in 2006 the Tigers had quite the winning lineup on their hands:


Today, it looks like this:

Austin Jackson, CF
Johnny Damon, LF
Magglio Ordonez, RF
Miguel Cabrera, 1B
Carlos Guillen, DH
Don Kelly or Kory Casto, 3B
Scott Sizemore, 2B
Gerald Laird, C
Adam Everett, SS

Now we just have to wait until the real Opening Day to see what the Final lineup will look like and we can only hope that this year's version can put together the same type of Championship season as that 2006 squad--which also Opened on the road against Kansas City.

Catholics Saved at Tigers Opening Day

There was a micro-uproar last week when it was discovered that the Tigers Home Opener was on Good Friday, and was scheduled for the holiest hours of the day at that. In fact, Billfer, who runs the Detroit Tigers Weblog, was quoted in the article and issued some very useful commentary about it the next day.

Well, the schedule hasn't changed, but Catholics making the game can rejoice. There will be fish fry meals available around Comerica Park so that they don't have to resort to warm pretzels and peanuts for sustenance. Kudos Tigers for making an nice change to accommodate your fans, while keeping the Opening Day Day-Game tradition alive.

Of course, the real question everybody wants to know is: Will there be Matzah?