Behold the power of baseball. The Hootie has the floor.

Hey Rand –

I know I’m merely a semi-regular commenter, and a rather uncelebrated one at that, but I had to share my thoughts / feelings / experience from opening day with someone, anyone (a sports fan) that might understand. Delete it, ignore it, post it, edit the hell out of it — I don’t care, do with it what you wish. I also included a few pics from the day.

I love baseball. I have since I was a kid. I didn’t play or pay attention to any other sport as a kid. Not even football, until high school.

I woke up giddy this morning, knowing my day would ultimately lead me to the 3rd row behind the left-handed batter’s box at the Dome. Concentrating at work was difficult, to say the least.

I watched some of the Tigers/Royals game over lunch (happy to see some divisional games instead of the rained out Yankees/Jays game). I know that I actually skipped a few steps on the way to the lunch room, and may have actually sung a bit as well.

Left work an hour early to ensure that there would be no chance of getting down to the Dome late. Hardly noticed the snow on the drive in. Took the train from the Warehouse District to the Dome; laughed to myself about the “regulars” complaining about all the Twins fans on the train.

Got down to the Dome a little after 4:30. Intended to go to Hubert’s to grab a brew until my buddy (who had the tickets) arrived. Bad idea. By then there was already a line of 50+ people waiting to get into Hubert’s. (I owe jama a half a pitcher of Mich Golden.) Didn’t feel like walking too far, so I headed over to “The Foul Pole”, the mostly open air bar across from the Twins ticket office on the plaza. It was pretty full, considering that it was 30 degrees and snowing like mad. There were a few Angels fans who complained a bit, but the Minnesotans took the weather in good humor. A crew from a California NBC station came over to do a quick interview, but moved on shortly, seeming to decide it was best to keep moving. They didn’t seem overly enthused with their assignment. I stood to the side, not knowing anyone there, but enjoying the company. I smiled a lot, and occasionally laughed- I was struck with a profound fondness for my state and team- where else but Minnesota would people show up to a baseball opener in everything from parkas to sweatshirts to jersey’s with short sleeves underneath?

The game was fun. Carlos Gomez put on a great show for his Metrodome debut, and Livan Hernandez looked pretty darn good himself. Torii got a couple nice ovations — once during the pre-game lineup announcements and one during his first at bat. Friend Andy and I decided that our cheering for Torii meant we needed to cheer twice as loud for Mauer, which we did. I think Mauer was at least able to match the response that Torii got, which was good.

Skipped the train and elected to walk back to the ramp after the game. Being a life-long suburbanite who loves downtown, Minneapolis during a good snow storm is fantastic to me — the size of the city mixed with the quiet that accompanies a blizzard creates a surreal setting that’s fantastic to observe. I’m very sad that my camera died and I was left with only my cell phone camera …

The nice thing about baseball is that the season is so long that most fans get a reasonable amount of time to be optimistic and excited for their team. Win on opening day? An obvious upper. Lose? You still have 161 games to turn it around. 3 weeks into the season and you’ve barely scratched the surface. Even 3 mediocre months aren’t enough to doom a team. No other sport can string a fan along so well.

Opening Day is like Christmas for me. (Blatant rip-off of Aaron Gleeman’s blog yesterday? Yes. Is it true? Very yes.) By the time present #162 is opened, we’ll have burned through Spring and Summer and gotten a start on Fall, I personally will have gone to Europe and (finally) gotten married, and we’ll finally be on the home stretch for the seemingly endless presidential campaign. Being a realist, I accept the fact that my team will likely need to fight to hit the .500 mark, but today enthusiasm > realism, and I love it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 11:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.