It's Opening Day
Testimony to a Midwesterner's love of the game and a team
The kid was 9 years old when he saw his first baseball game.
Living in a rural northeast Missouri farmhouse, he jumped off the school bus each day and ran home to catch the last innings of the 1971 World Series on TV.
Jim Palmer’s high leg kick and Brooks Robinson’s mastery of 3rd base hooked him.
It didn’t matter that the Orioles lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 7 games. The kid was a Baltimore Orioles fan for life.
The same thing happened in 1979. Despite being up 3-1, the Orioles faltered and lost the Series to the Pirates again. This caused the kid, by then a teenager, no end of ribbing at school because he’d foolishly boasted the Orioles were a shoo-in.
The loss hurt. Even now, the kid tells people he’ll never set foot in the city of Pittsburgh because of the pain.
By now, you’ll have figured out that 9-year-old kid was me; is me.
As I got older, other sports eclipsed baseball in popularity. But for me, it’s always been baseball.
Which makes today special. It’s Opening Day.
Over the years, I’ve tried to set aside some time at work for this most wondrous of days. Often, it’s meant tuning in a radio broadcast while working at my desk; in later years, I’d glance at an MLB broadcast on my phone or computer.
At times, I’d try to duck out early to catch a full game at home – almost always unsuccessfully.
This year, it’s different. I work from home, and I’m my own boss. The Orioles and Red Sox start at 1:10 p.m., and I’ll be ready.
At the beginning of the season, there are invariably stories speculating about the future of baseball. I saw a column recently that said baseball is becoming more popular. Last year, a report dwelled on its problems and questioned whether the game was “trading on its legacy."
These stories hold little interest for me. I’ve been more interested in the spring training contest to determine who will make the Orioles starting rotation. (No doubt, this has captured your attention, too.)
The major question was settled this week when Grayson Rodriguez was told he’d begin the year in the minors. Much of Birdland was upset; me, I’m patient. I just hope the kid makes the big leagues soon. They say he’s got an outstanding fastball and changeup. His slider is supposed to be pretty good, too.
As an Iowan, I survive the winter cold and, to me, the dearth of relevant sports by keeping a single date in mind: when pitchers and catchers report to spring training. This year, it was Feb. 15. The six weeks of workouts and speculation that followed all pointed to today: The day, as I like to put it, when the world starts spinning again.
This hasn’t always been a day of optimism for Orioles fans.
When I was a kid, there wasn’t much doubt the Orioles would contend for the playoffs. In the 1970s and early ‘80s, the Orioles were among the best. Guys like Jim Palmer, Brooks and Frank Robinson, Paul Blair, Boog Powell, Mark Belanger, Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray were my heroes.
In 1999, I got the thrill of meeting Brooks Robinson in Bettendorf where he signed a book my great-grandmother gave to me when I was 12 years old. Brooks is on the cover.
I love that book. If my house ever caught fire, I’d make sure my family got out first. But I’d go back for the book.
We won the World Series in 1983, but for many of the last 40 years, things have been pretty dodgy for the Orioles. Fourteen losing seasons between 1998 and 2011 and a staggering 412 losses over the last four years (not counting the Covid-shortened 2020 season) has often meant Opening Day was the beginning of a long and disappointing year.
But I’m still an Orioles fan; always will be.
As a Midwesterner, it wasn’t easy to remain so.
The only way I got to watch Orioles games as a kid was the rare weekend when they were on the “Game of the Week,” or if they made the playoffs.
Otherwise, it was me fiddling with the dial of a $10 portable radio trying to pull in fuzzy radio broadcasts from Kansas City, Chicago, Minneapolis or, on rare occasions, New York. But then, only if the atmosphere was really clear.
Even now, Major League Baseball makes it hard on Iowans. It blacks out six teams on MLB.TV, an excessive number that rewards my 52-year loyalty with a thumb in the eye.
A bill was introduced in the Iowa Legislature this month to push back on the unfairness. Even if it passes, I have my doubts whether it’s enforceable. If the politicians had really wanted to stick up for Iowa’s baseball fans, they could have boycotted the Field of Dreams game last year. The event gave MLB a lot of valuable goodwill in return for which it removed the thumb from our eye and gave us the big middle finger.
Of course, MLB knows people like me won’t abandon baseball. Each year, I shell out $125-150 to watch the games on MLB.TV. Frustrated, I ditched it last year, but once the Orioles caught fire, I went crawling back. They knew I would.
Prior to that, I listened to the games. It’s easier to pull in radio broadcasts now than in the old days. Over a streaming platform, they’re much clearer and I still admire the skill a good announcer can bring to the task. But let’s face it, you can’t hear a slider.
So that 60-year-old kid will be back in front of the TV today.
The prognosticators predict another bad year for the Orioles. Some of them say we’ll finish last in the AL East, under .500
By plumbing statistical depths that turn off many of us who love baseball and even math, the experts don’t give my team much hope. I don’t care. They dismissed us last year, and we almost made the playoffs.
I’m eager to see whether Adley Rutschman can duplicate the magic of 2022; if the starting pitchers can grind out the innings; what Gunnar Henderson’s first full year will be like; and if John Means will come back strong this summer following Tommy John surgery.
Above all, can the Orioles prove the prognosticators wrong again? Will we make the playoffs?
These are the questions I contemplate today.
My heart is full. It’s Opening Day.
Along the Mississippi is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please check out the work of my colleagues and consider subscribing to their work.
Laura Belin, Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights
Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll
Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines
Art Cullen, Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake
Suzanna de Baca: Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley
Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji
Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla
Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines
Fern Kupfer and Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames
Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey
Tar Macias, Hola Iowa, Iowa
Kurt Meyer, Showing Up
Pat Kinney, View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
Kyle Munson: Kyle’s Main Street, Iowa
Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
John Naughton, My Life, in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.
Macey Spensley: The Midwest Creative
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices
Cheryl Tevis, Unfinished Business, Boone County
Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
Also, please check out our alliance partner, Iowa Capital Dispatch. It provides hard-hitting news along with selected commentary by members of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.
Thank you for this lovely column about baseball and what it means to you. After all that life throws at us, I am glad that 9-yeear-old Ed is still there.
Wonderful column, Ed. The sage Tom Witosky, who was a reporting colleague of mine at the Des Moines Register, saw me worrying myself nearly to ulcers over job and family concerns, this time of year 4+ decades ago. Said Witosky: “Now when it’s really chewing you up, just go outdoors by yourself somewhere, take s little walk, then stop and scream out loud, ‘Who gives a shit It’s baseball season!’ “ It works.