Chicago radio host paid homage to baseball’s opening day in this sweet video
What is it about opening day?
Naturally, there is excitement over the beginning of the NBA season or college basketball’s Midnight Madness fun.
But no sport has a day that inspires adults to wax nostalgically quite like baseball’s opening day. Maybe that’s because it begins when winter is ending or perhaps it’s because by there comes a time when every baseball fan can say they’ve watched more than a thousand games. That’s the beauty of a 162-game season.
The first full day of baseball was Thursday, and in honor of the event, Lin Brehmer of WXRT radio in Chicago wrote this loving tribute to opening day.
WGN-TV put pictures of Brehmer’s words and shared this video on Twitter:
Here is a transcription of what Brehmer said:
“We make a beginning. Tobacco chaws and rally caps, sliders and split-fingers. Deep green fields and long white lines. A tumble of arcane numbers: earned run average, hits and walks per innings pitched. Numbers. Random and unforgettable: 61, 512, 714.
“Maybe it started early. Seven years old, your back against the warm red brick of the corner candy store, holding an improbably colored bottle of pop. Something like Tahitian Treat or Mountain Dew. Your throat choked with those slabs of baseball card bubble gum while you studied those stats with an intensity a ‘Tale of Two Cities’ will never inspire. Those timeless portraits. Nellie Fox, his cheek puffed like an otter.
“Maybe it began when you held your dad’s hand as you walked into a ballpark a long time ago and realized that black-and-white television didn’t tell the truth. It never told you about that green, that impossible green. The ball field. Where else would the memory of cigar smoke be as comforting as a box of Cracker Jack?
“How do we remember all those names? The famous, the infirm, the mighty and the fallen. The Splendid Splinter, the Big Train, the Big Hurt, the Hawk, Hack. Guys named Pumpsie, Dizzy and Swish.
“The baseball season, a dance we do with memory. We’ve waited long enough. The winter is over when the umpires urge grown men to play.”
This story was originally published March 29, 2019 at 1:34 PM.
