There’s nothing strange about the world of sports until you really start to look for it. That is unless you’re watching baseball. Now you might be thinking to yourself,
“Hey, that’s America’s favorite pastime!, or “Hey, that’s an extremely sacred part of our sporting culture!” or even, “Hey, that’s yet another easy excuse for me to drink excessively on a weekday without turning any heads!”
The fact is that you’re correct about all of those things (particularly the last one) but you have to understand that beneath the relaxing, summer sun-filled, hot dog eating competition that is Major League Baseball, there is a lot to be elaborated on and unpacked, much of which just doesn’t make any sense. This is particularly true about baseball’s sacred Opening Day.
Why is that Opening Day is such a big deal? I’m from the Cincinnati area where Opening Day is just as big an event as Thanksgiving Day. In fact, if you ask most Cincinnati Reds fans what the major difference between these two holidays is, their answers would likely be that Opening Day has a higher quality, more boozed-up parade. Yet Opening Day parades, no matter where they take place, all fall victim to the same inherent deficiency – they’re just parades, and parades are more boring than basic cable at 4 a.m. (believe me, I’ve watched a lot of it.)
Opening Day is particularly nonsensical when you stop and think about the fact that it happens every single year, and yet nothing changes. Now obviously this is true about all holidays, even the real ones, but I’m more focused on the fact that, particularly in the case of Cincinnati baseball, this is a day that starts the season, yet the season is quite literally always a disappointment. That’s not true of Halloween, as while some Novembers and Decembers that follow it are complete shit shows, others are quite alright. It’s not true of New Year’s Eve either, as we all know that each year keeps getting consecutively worse. But that’s still movement!
Opening Day in Major League Baseball has become (or perhaps always has been) a really silly, strange thing, yet so many people seem to love it. Nevertheless, no matter how many bratwursts and Bud Lites you can stuff down your throat, your team is still throwing a little ball around a field, and will likely lose their first game to some other chumps, just like they always have.
