opening day

I remember them clearly, the days when the sun would start to stay out later and my father would be watching the game. Windows open (I grew up without air conditioning), we would sit and watch (I grew up without cable) until even the light summer nights would turn to dark. On TV, though, it never looked like night as the bright lights of the stadium fell on everyone, illuminating the field.

He would talk about baseball when he was younger, the 1962 Yankees with Joe Pepitone, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, 1977 with Thurman Munson, Bucky Dent and Reggie Jackson. He would talk about the way it used to be, the way they used to wear their socks, the way they never used to get into fights the way they do now. And we would sit, windows open in the summer heat from opening day on, and watch.

And I then went to college in Boston, which he didn’t like. People picked fights and made jabs and wore shirts that declared their hatred for the team I had grown to love. So in 2001 New York lost in a year I wanted them to win the most and in 2003 I watched from a bar next to Fenway Park as Aaron Boone made grown men cry.

Whenever he would see me my father would always ask the same question, “So is this gonna be the year kid?” And I’d smile and laugh and say “they always say this is the year.”
Until one time, it was.

Opening day always makes me miss being a kid. This will be my first season in a while watching the games on safe ground. However I will miss the man who would always scream and cheer from the apartment above me every time the Sox would make a base hit. I will miss the drunken fans in their Jeter Drinks Wine Cooler’s t-shirts. And I know it will take me a while to realize I don’t have to hide being happy when Sheffield hits a home run. But a part of me will miss that certain hum that starts on opening day in Boston and doesn’t die until long after the last pitch leaves the mound.

But things change, people move on, say goodbye, take bigger paychecks or more steriods or retire and then come back. So you can’t tell too much from opening day, and it won’t be until they’re home in the Bronx that will I really feel like the season has started. Because it’s like the great Yogi Berra once said, “in baseball, you don’t know nothing.”