Baseball is Back

One of the strangest consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for me has been the disappearance of sports. Their postponement was an absolute necessity, but the part that I found so odd was how accustomed I had become to their absence.

While ESPN highlights, sports talk radio, and box scores used to be a major part of my daily routine, over the past 4 month they had become a complete afterthought.

Maybe that’s because there seems to be so many more important things going on in the world right now, or maybe it was my mind compartmentalizing in order to avoid dealing with the reality, but I replaced the time that would usually have been consumed by sports on other hobbies and carried on.

That changed on Opening Day.

For me, Opening Day of the baseball season has always been an unofficial holiday. Occurring shortly after the calendar declared the beginning of Spring, the start of the baseball season might as well have been New Year’s Day. After long, cold, hard winters, it signified the start of better things to come. Opening Day was synonymous with nicer weather, outdoor activities, and summer vacations. It was the light at the end of the tunnel.

This year, that was taken from us.

So last week, when the players took the field, and the umpires shouted “Play ball!” I felt grateful. Something that I had taken for granted as an annual certainty, that was lost, had finally returned.

While Opening Day certainly looked a lot different this year, without the traditional pomp and circumstance, without any fans in attendance aside from via cardboard cutout, and without the usual high-fiving and celebratory handshakes, it’s importance may have been greater than ever.

I think back to the weeks and months following the September 11th attacks, and how baseball played such a large role in helping a nation heal. How the country was looking for something to provide them with some semblance of normalcy in the midst of chaos. I'm hoping the game can be that bright spot again this year.

While I don’t expect to be sitting in the bleachers chowing down on a $5 hot dog and drinking an $8 beer any time soon, I don’t care. Baseball is back and I'm thankful for it.

As Brad Pitt, portraying former Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane, so eloquently stated in the movie Moneyball, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”