Living in the Cincinnati area, opening day is a special event. The Reds are the only MLB franchise that is guaranteed to play at home on Opening Day. As I write this, a parade is going on downtown [last I checked, people wearing a Whopper and french fries costume was making their way down the street] and Great American Ballpark is starting to fill up.
President Bush will be here, throwing out the first pitch around 2pm. In the sports world, this is still the greatest "honorary honor" there is. In football, you flip a coin. In basketball, you toss a ball in the air about 3 feet. But, in baseball, you take the mound and in front of a packed house, you have to not only get the ball to the catcher, but try to get a strike. [So in the NBA, they need to take a ceremonial free throw and in football they must have a ceremonial kick off tp make it match].
And as far as the Prez goes, dude is pretty good at such things. Remember in 2001 he walked into Yankee Stadium during the World Series just 2 months after the World Trade Center Attacks and fired some heat right into Jorge Posada's mitt.
For everyone but the White Sox and Indians [who played last night] this is the beginning of a long tedious season. For some, it could be the beginning of a banner year. For others, it could be the beginning of a surprising rise. And for many, it's just another sad love song.
My Reds fall under the latter. It will be a season of home runs.....ones we hit and ones we give up. There will be hot stretches, cold stretches great comebacks and blown saves. The most exciting thing here would be an Adam Dunn home run championship.....and a Junior Griffey stellar year after last's seasons "Comeback Award" campaign.
Unlike some franchises, Reds fans hope for the team to be relevant for as long as they can. Give the guys something to talk about before the Yankees-Red Sox-Cardinals-Braves-Mets love fest that will happen down the road.
The season will begin with everyone in Cincy watching attentively at how the team performs. Sometime after Memorial Day, if the team is struggling....we'll all lose interest again. At the All Star Break, we may be trying to figure out which guys would look good in either Yankee or White Sox pin-stripes. The end of the season will be the main guys taking the rest of the year off to fix their pains and watching the young guys step in to try to make a career outta this.
While baseball has been less and less as important to me over the years....I still enjoy opening day. Despite the weather at this time of year [last night, we had a horrific storm]...Opening Day marks the unofficial first day of spring. Day baseball with a slew of pitching aces and World Series dreams being born.....with later tonight the end of March Madness [which, is now into April].
Go Reds.....I'll have ol' Marty [UNC grad] on my 700 WLW on the way to work today....and my ESPNMobile on full alert all day.
GO TO Coztanza's Commentary FOR A BREAKDOWN OF THE SEASON AHEAD......
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