Opening Day 2012

"Great is baseball, the national tonic, the revival of hope, the restorer of confidence."

- The Sporting News, c. 1930's


Well Timberwolves, it's been a fun winter. I'll catch you again in the fall, ACL's all healed, energy back up, the anticipation higher still, floppy haired Spaniards a'leaping and my BFF hitting the treys. Looking forward to my new perch in section 236, row K.

Wild - sorry, I just don't care, but do me a favor - try not to depress my girlfriend so much next year.

Vikings - yeah, I really don't care.

When you're a baseball fan, the seasons don't transition from summer to fall, winter to spring. They go from your team playing its last game, a period of anticipation, the first spring workout, and then tomorrow - opening day. It would be cliche to reference the old adage - this is our year, we're going to win the pennant for sure - but it's too accurate to pass up. Even for those teams with no hope of championship glory (quite realistically the 2012 Twins), opening day always references renewal.

No other sport, nay, no other social institution, embraces opening day with such conviction and meaning as baseball. Perhaps it is because, over the course of 162 games and over a century of tradition, baseball is woven into the fabric of our consciousness. For a baseball fan, opening day is more than a holiday, it's one of the best days of the year.

I find that the baseball fan, as pessimistic as one can be crunching sabermetrics or critiquing why the manager didn't put pull the starter in the 7th, the baseball fan is at heart an optimist. We always want to believe that the odds can be broken, that our team can put together a streak and do something special. And why not? There's no clock to inhibit the game, theoretically, if not for an arbitrarily fixed fence, the playing field goes on an infinite distance. Baseball lends itself to romanticism, to romantics.



Unquestionably, the best thing to do in Minneapolis in the summer is spend an afternoon or evening at Target Field, hotdog in one hand, beer in the other - even better now that the Twins have Surly and Fulton.... After all, as Humphrey Bogart wisely observed, a hot dog at the ballpark beats roast beef at the Ritz. I wholeheartedly agree. Sure, the modern ballpark has many wiles to distract you from the game (exhibit a - that acid trippy monstrosity in Miami and the electric green outfield walls), but the game never loses its fascination.

It may very well be a rough year - our pitching is terrifying, one of our two best players has been concussed for a year and a half - but that doesn't matter now. Right now, we're winning the World Series.