We don't do sentiment here. We appreciate and, conversely, call out people and things, but sentiment isn't our bag. Not anymore. Not since spending time in the kitchen and watching what the chef does with the soup.
So baseball opening day/night has no special allure here. It means no days off since December, lose your vacation days and sleep on the floor in the office. The kids? Show 'em a picture of daddy.
But baseball gets folks all weepy. Americans love to wax on about baseball. Yes, it's true. It's also true that there are companies that exist solely to produce that saccharine sweet baseball-as-a-metaphor-for-life bullbleep. You know, that NPR/Field of Dreams tripe about ghosts walking out of the corn or holding your dad's hand as you walk into Fenway or something like that.
Man, it just makes me want to throw up.
Why, you ask (or even if you didn't I'm going to write it anyway)? Perhaps it's because the reality of life has made a bigger impression than the fairy tale. For instance, my first exposure to baseball came at Veterans Stadium and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. At the Vet the design was so bad that nearly every seat in the house sucked. I can remember walking in there for the first time in 1976 and thinking that we'd be better off watching the game at home on TV - at least then I'd be able to see what the players looked like. At least then I wouldn't have some jackass spill beer down my back as I nursed a nose bleed brought on from the altitude of the crappy seats.
Or in Baltimore, a neighborhood stadium with sardine can-styled parking, National Bohemian beer ads everywhere, and drunk cab driver on the dugout leading the cheers for the weeded crowd that needed to yank out the ganja one last time so that the he would be numb for when the police billy clubs rained down on him after being tackled for running out on the field.
You're crazy if you think going to places like that doesn't have an effect on a kid prone to over-thinking everything.
Even now it seems as if baseball is personified by odd behavior. Like Billy Wagner exposing himself after being asked about throwing a slider, Charlie Manuel's stories about Billy Martin, or Brett Myers just being Brett Myers.
The truth is I prefer the reality to the produced fairy tales. I appreciate it. Just like the put on part - you know, the crap about how time starts on Opening Day - the truth is so different from real life. Accepted behavior and norms are pulverized with a fungo and no one goes to jail for it.
Who doesn't appreciate that?
So let's wax on...
A few years ago the Vet was closed and mercifully blown up. Personally, I think the park got off easy. I would have preferred torture or waterboarding instead of implosion, but it all worked out in the end.
Anyway, all these things are selfish. It's a charmed life hanging at the park and sleeping on the floor. It could be worse - it could be the Nationals instead of the World Champs.
Look for the live blog updates tonight. I'd do it on Twitter, but there is nothing more annoying than way too many obsessive tweets.