Opening Day (Observed)

After the last out of every World Series I have this urge curl up the fetal position, suck my thumb, and mumble endlessly about it being cold, dark, and not wanting to watch the NBA. Fortunately, I have a family, career, and other interests that keep from becoming dysfunctional during the baseball off-season. I find a happy medium by looking up important dates like; Winter Meetings; pitchers and catchers reporting; start of college baseball (usually in late February); start of spring games; and finally the most important date on the baseball calendar; Opening Day.

Opening Day is like the official start of summer. From now until three weeks shy of Thanksgiving there will be a game to listen or watch almost everyday. Most days there will be 15 games. Like a sappy soft rock DJ on Christmas Eve, I’m going recount my Opening Day Memories and shenanigans. We all know Opening Day is like Christmas. Santa as you can see is a Royals fan. I’m pretty sure he likes Opening Day more than Christmas. He doesn’t have to work.

Ever since I became cognizant that baseball was my favorite sport I have thought Opening Day should be a National holiday. For some season, Congress, the State Legislature, and most importantly, my parents weren’t having any of it. I still had to go to school on that first Monday in April. That didn’t stop me from looking at the schedule in the local paper and knowing start times and starting pitchers. Even though I couldn’t watch or keep track on yet to be invented mobile devices, it made me smile knowing that the baseball season was underway. After school there was the cliché running home after school to catch the end of the afternoon games. I would like to say it was the Royals game, but on Opening Day any two teams will do.

When I began to make my own schedule things began to change. I had finally earned things like accrued time off, and floating holidays. Did you say holiday? If it’s a floating holiday Opening Day is my holiday! The first year I was able to accomplish this was 2004. This was the first year I was able to attend an Opening Day at Kauffman Stadium. If you’re a Royals fan you know 2004 was a Royals Classic with Carlos Beltran hitting a walk-off home run off Damaso Marte. Unfortunately, that was the high mark of the 2004 season. I attended one other Opening Day in 2006. It was an unremarkable loss during a season where there was a lot of losing.

However, my more enjoyable Opening Days have come after I moved more than 3 hours from Kauffman Stadium. I’m a Royals fan, but I’m a baseball fan too. I will watch any two teams play. Which is why I’ve come appreciate an Opening Day away from the yard. On Opening Day there is a plethora of nationally televised games. My friends and I have started what we call an “Opening Day Extravaganza”. We take the day off from work. If the weather is nice we play golf in the morning. Meet at a sports bar for lunch to watch the early games, and move to a residence for the rest of the day. We watch the Royals when they are on, but when the shortstop drops a fly ball in the first inning of the season it’s tough not to switch over to the Braves game.

This year is a little different. We’ll call today Opening Day (Observed). We did not take a vacation day this year. However, we will be making the road trip to watch today’s Royals-Halos game. But what we’re really coming to see is the Storm Chasers take on the Naturals. You can’t go wrong with 18 innings of live baseball to ring in the new baseball season. We will be serving Royal Blue Kool-Aide and Moose Tacos at our tailgate.

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