We are still five days away from Easter, but Monday was a bit of a secular Easter for the country.
Monday was the day we long for throughout the bitter snows of winter.
I'm talking, of course, about Opening Day.
If you strip Easter to its bare bones, it's really a celebration of rebirth and renewal-a celebration of spring and a new reason to believe. That's what Opening Day is all about.
This column was due well before the first pitch was thrown, but Opening Day wins aren't as important as hope. Today, every team is either in first place or just a game behind the leader.
Baseball gets a bad rap for being a boring sport, but that's an unwarranted label-it is still our national sport.
There's a reason poker chose to call its championship the World Series of Poker and not the Super Bowl of Poker. Cities and states still enact three strike laws for felons not four downs laws. A perfect presentation is one you hit out of the park, not something drained from behind the arc.
Every fall, we get seduced by the hard-hitting action-packed excitement of football. The jaw-jarring hits, the miraculous catches and the two-week event that is the Super Bowl mesmerize us.
Basketball rolls along with its one-name and nickname stars-the Kobes, LeBrons, CP3s and AIs-and we become star stricken. At least until we realize the regular season game is essentially an 82-game long preseason with no real meaning.
But baseball is different. It's not boring-it's intricate. It's the only sport in which the defense controls the ball.
Going to a football game, I suspect, is much like going to the Coliseum in Roman times. There's lots of drinking, lots of swearing and more than enough violence to get the adrenaline flowing.
It's a social event more than anything else, but you actually get more out of a football game from watching on TV.
With baseball, there is so much about it you can't see on the TV. Where does the shortstop set up when the catcher calls for a pitch on the outside corner?
I guess when it comes down to it, baseball offers the kind of continuity and predictability often missing in life. It has its flaws, like anything else, but every year from April until October you can head to the park and enjoy a ballgame. It may not have the superstars of the NBA or the hard-hitting excitement of the NFL, but it's our game.
Some of you may have experienced that same renewal of hope I did Monday, and some of you may think this whole thing came out of left field.
