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“Memorable Opening Days” Photo Gallery
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We made it!! Happy Opening Day!!
“You always get a special kick on Opening Day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you’re a kid.” –Joe DiMaggio
For old-time baseball fans like us, if there’s a better day of the year than Opening Day, I’m not sure what it is!
(In the featured photo above, we see a scene from Opening Day at Comiskey Park, 1981))
Just to put you in the right frame of mind on this wonderful day, here’s a few words about Opening Day I found on Wikipedia. I think we can all agree with the sentiment:
“For baseball fans, Opening Day serves as a symbol of rebirth. Writer Thomas Boswell once penned a book titled, “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.” Many feel that the occasion represents a newness or a chance to forget last season, in that all 30 of the major league clubs and their millions of fans begin with 0–0 records.”
And here’s an Opening Day essay sent by contributor George Curcio. I think George captures the sentiment many of us felt in our youth on this special day:
Reflections on Opening Day
by
George Curcio
“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” ~ Rogers Hornsby
Rogers Hornsby exactly captured the essence of Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, at least as it was to an 8-year-old boy in 1968. It was only three-tenths of a mile from school to home, but it seemed like three miles. At the time, it seemed like an Olympian feat as I ran the entire distance, anxious to turn on the television to see how my New York Yankees would start the season.
As he would be for seven of the Yankees’ Opening Days, Mel Stottlemyre was on the mound. His opponent was George Brunet, a crafty lefthander who had the misfortune of pitching mostly for lower-division teams. Stottlemyre went the full nine innings and did not allow a run. Brunet was almost as good, going seven innings and allowing only one run.
The Yankees won the game 1-0, the difference being a second-inning home run by Frank Fernandez, a right-handed hitter in the lineup solely because Brunet was a southpaw. Jake Gibbs, the Yankees’ lead catcher, was a left-handed bat and therefore sat out the game. Fernandez’s home run was one of only three Yankees hits that day. The other two, appropriately, were singles by Mickey Mantle, who enjoyed a grand start to his final Major-league season.
Sadly, I do not remember if I had arrived home in time to see Fernandez’s homer. But I know I ran, because it was a yearly ritual for me. It was when Opening Day games were played in the daytime. As I find myself at age 64, I also find myself becoming more sentimental about day games, and other things remembered from my childhood that are no longer true.
Foremost among those memories is Opening Day being the province of the Cincinnati Reds. Tradition dictated the Reds always played at home on Opening Day. This was due to their location as the southernmost team in the early National League, allowing other teams with colder climates to avoid playing at home in the early spring.
It was much different then than it is today. Now, baseball is trying to establish itself as an international sport. As a result, this year most teams will still have a week to go in their Spring training seasons while the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres play a two-game series in South Korea March 20-21.
The same has been true in most recent seasons. Two teams are chosen to play Opening Day sometimes a week before every other team starting their season. Another major difference is the availability of all games being viewed on demand via the internet.
Whereas at one time, a decision to get up in the middle of the night to watch an international opener had to be made, there is no such quandary. The game can be watched at the viewer’s leisure by demand online.
Along with the quote from Rogers Hornsby, there’s also this quote from Hall of Famer Early Wynn:
“An opener is not like any other game. There’s that little extra excitement, a faster beating of the heart. You have that anxiety to get off to a good start, for yourself and for the team. You know that when you win the first one, you can’t lose ’em all.”
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/opening_day/opening_day.shtml)
Wynn captured the excitement of an Opening Day fan. Mel Stottlemyre’s Opening Day shutout victory signaled good things for the Yankees that season. Of course, there was disappointment to come that season, but so what? The Yankees were in first place on Opening Day.
George Curcio
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Well done George. Opening Day is full of excitement with a touch of nostalgia for Opening Days past. Major League Baseball with 162 games does a better job on Opening Day than any other major sport. While it signifies a change in the season and the portent of long summer nights filled with baseball, spring begins on Opening Day and that spirit of renewal cannot be duplicated.
My son Gordon and I talked about Opening Day with author Michael Ortman whose book ‘Opening Day 50 for 50’ in which he details attending 50 consecutive Opening Days, is a good read and he’s a great guy to talk with.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1066072/14778527
My favorite day as a kid and George’s sentiments were similar to mine.
My favorite memory was the Red Sox home opener in 1964. It happened to fall on Good Friday and we parochial school kids had the day off. This meant being able to watch the entire game. The added attraction was a 19 year old local kid, Tony Conigliaro unexpectedly
made the roster and starting lineup.
In Conigliaro’s first AB, he hit a Joel Horlen pitch over the Green Monster in left contributing to the Sox win.
I love the photos above, especially the group of kids outside the Bleachers at Fenway Park. Judging by the number of them holding paper bag lunches, it may have been a school outing. Sixty eight years later, if you took a picture today, very little of the background would be different.
I’ll be watching Cubs/Rangers on ESPN tonight and hoping to stay awake for Red Sox-Mariners afterwards.
I remember the Pirates opening the 1960 season against the Milwaukee Braves in Milwaukee. Two days later the Pirates hosted the Cincinnati Reds for their opener. I don’t really know why I remember such things? I guess in those days they tried to bunch all the team’s openers in the first three days of the season. Never did research it but I wonder when that practice started and when it ended?
Wrigley Field, 1969, cutting classes with your best buddy to score SRO tickets in the bleachers. Willie Smith’s GW extra-innings HR. Pandemonium. A memory as clear as day 55 years later.
One of my least favorite days of the year was always the day of the final game of the World Series; no more baseball for almost six months! Then Opening Day would arrive, with the first game almost always in Cincinnati, and I would begin my daily ritual of poring over box scores, seeing sky high averages for those who got off to blazing starts and seeing how long it took for the last team to get their first win and/or be dealt their first loss.
Ironically, today we loaded up the moving truck with most of our household goods, including my collection of boxes and boxes of baseball record books, magazines, and assorted memorabilia, most of which has been in those boxes, not having been looked at for almost 25 years. Baseball lost me after a number of strikes, but just about completely when they cancelled the 1994 World Series. I came back years later, tried to get interested, but it had lost it’s magic, and then free agency, steroids, and ever growing larger and larger contracts turned me off completely.
The few times I started to regain some interest, I was bombarded with statistics that I never heard of, umpires that apparently knew little of the strike zone, players that forgot the fundamentals of the game, games that became longer and longer, and, most recently, rules that are changing the way the game had been played for so many years.
So today was Opening Day (then how come two teams started out with records of 1-1?). Big deal. I didn’t miss the game last year, or the year before that, or the year before that…..I love the game of baseball; the history of the game and the way it was meant to be played, but not the way that is is now being played. Anyone want to buy some memorabilia?
Hours away from the Mets opener my mind flashes back to the NY Giants home opener in 1955. My dad and I were in the upper deck behind home plate, 9th inning Dodgers leading 10-8 in a wild topsy-turvy game at the Polo Grounds.
Monte Irvin led off the 9th and connected with a Jim Hughes pitch that looked like a line drive just to the right of shortstop. Then the ball took off like a rocket on a blistering rising arc. Duke Snider was off with the crack of the bat racing at full gallop, back to the plate, barreling toward deep centerfield.
My father and I looked at each other and exclaimed almost simultaneously, “It’s going to go into the centerfield bleachers!” This had happened only three times at the cavernous PG. Snider hit the 10-foot cinder track fronting the small bleacher fence and leaped high in the air. He speared the drive then immediately collapsed in a heap at the base of the munchkin wall–white flashing from the web of his glove!
I was so mad I slammed my scorecard against the seat, my hero robbed again! Then I realized I just saw one of the greatest catches of all time.
Great story Bill! I’m at CitiField right now waiting inside as it’s very windy and cold. And crowded. And I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else!
Thanks much, Mark!
Hate to admit it but I couldn’t take that raw wind at Citi–even walking our little chihuahua on quite little Brook St. in quite little Springfield NJ was an ordeal with the wind gusts.
Just got back from an errand and am afraid to look at the score. Heard they had instituted a new rule whereby Jose Quintana would be allowed a protective screen in front of the mound today. His spring was ungodly!
Enjoy!
Thanks for all the great comments! Hope your teams do well this year!