TheBaseballStars

So this is what the American Pastime is all about, eh? Waking up at 3 a.m. Pacific time to see the first official games of the Major League season? Call me a selfish baseball fan, but this still does not really mark the beginning of the season.

Daisuke Matsuzaka and Joe Blanton will throw their first pitches of 2008 in less than an hour (it’s 2 a.m. here in California), but I will be fast asleep. See I originally planned to take Tuesday off to watch the Sox-A’s game live from Japan, but decided against it when my boss began got upset last week about the vacation schedule. I instead decided that my annual personal holiday would come on March 31, the REAL Opening Day.

For nearly each of the last 15 years I have made it a point to take the day off school or work to celebrate Opening Day. Why? Because Opening Day is the culmination of all the thoughts and feelings that have welled up in my head over the last five months. It means no more anticipation. No more projecting what my fantasy squads will look like on the first day of the season. No more day dreaming while cutting my lawn, thinking of the grassy fields that will soon be filled with activity. No more. Because it will all be here.

But it cannot be here if it comes at 3 a.m. (6 a.m. ET) and I am not awake to see it. And it certainly cannot come at 5 p.m. (8 ET) on a Sunday when the Atlanta Braves travel to Washington, D.C. to play the Nationals in a pseudo exhibition game that Major League Baseball has decided to make its Prime Time season opener. (Yes, the stats will count for your fantasy leagues.)

All of these shenanigans that MLB has concocted to boost ratings, showcase the game to other cultures, or show off a new stadium for a franchise that once was run by the league itself do not do the game justice. Opening Day is an event, one that shall be celebrated by fans world wide — all at the same time.

Fans should be out at the ball parks, in their living rooms or sitting next to a radio. They should be clad in their team colors hoping their squads can win the first game of the season so even the followers of the sorriest club (read: San Francisco Giants) can look at another person and say, “Hey, we’ve got a share of first place.”

But no. Instead the majority of the country will have awoken today and missed an entire game. The first game. The game they, we, you, and I have been waiting for for five months. And we’ll again be asked to suffer another night’s wait when Atlanta and Washington square off on Sunday.
The stats will count. The wins and losses will count. And the income certainly will count.

But for me, things don’t start to count until Monday. That is when America celebrates this game together.

Note: In case you’re interested, I will be doing a live Opening Day blog on TheBaseballStars.com on March 31.