Opening day gives renewed hope
COMMENTARY
By Brandon Ortiz

It’s fitting that baseball season starts in the spring, when the dark gray of winter disappears, the flowers begin to bloom and life is seemingly reborn.

Only New Year’s Day is more blissfully naive than opening day for Major League Baseball. It’s the one day of the year when the Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Devil Rays are guaranteed to have the same record as the New York Yankees.

Only on opening day does the thought of the Rangers posting a sub-5.00 ERA seem more plausible than that New Year’s resolution to lose 10 pounds.

I, unfortunately, don’t have wonderful memories of scoring that game-winning run or making that diving catch. I’m what they call athletically challenged, so my organized baseball career ended when I was 7 years old and mired in the bottom of the order. But I do have great memories of watching baseball.

The smell of nachos and beer, the crack from the sound of the bat and the pitiful, yet fun “wave” reminds me of my youth — before the strike of 1994 and before I realized a lot of professional athletes are over-paid crybabies who don’t know what it’s like to have a real job. It reminds of me of players you could look up to, like Nolan Ryan, who was, and still is, my all-time favorite player.

And it reminds me of quality time with my great-aunt. Pam — or Sissy, as the children in my family call her — used to take me to about a dozen games a year when an entire family could get bleacher seats for $10. At one time, I had the entire Rangers’ roster memorized — for the last decade. I can still remember Rusty Greer’s batting average in 1996 (.332) and the amount of saves journeyman southpaw Ed Vosberg had that year (8).

When the Rangers play their scheduled home opener Friday, I’ll be in the stands eating hot dogs and peanuts, hoping Texas can hold Seattle to six runs. The Rangers stunk the past three seasons, and of course, finished dead last each year. And unless Chan Ho Park morphs into Randy Johnson (and the rest of the rotation follows suit, for that matter), the Rangers are likely to stink again this year.

I pity those who don’t like baseball, because they never get to experience anything like opening day. No other sport has such a celebrated beginning. Sure, the start of football is catching up, but it’s not quite the same. Maybe it has something to do with the history of baseball, our national past-time, or it’s just the sunny, spring weather.

Or maybe it’s just the blatant optimism surrounding a sport with little parity, where the little guy really doesn’t have a chance to win. It’s the only time poor Cubs’ fans — having last seen their beloved team win a championship in 1908 — can fancy themselves as boosters of a World Series contender.

Opening day is about more than just baseball — it’s about hope. And in these trying times, hope is in short supply.

Opinion Editor Brandon Ortiz is a junior news-editorial journalism major from Fort Worth.