O P I N I O N

NOT THAT PROFOUND

By Nathan Graziano

I don’t work on Opening Day¹.

As a teacher, I am allotted three personal days each school year, and as soon as I return to my classroom in August, before I even unpack, I put in for a personal day that will coincide with the Red Sox first official game, usually sometime at the end of March.

If I were allowed to declare this day a religious observance, I certainly would, and it wouldn’t be complete blasphemy. You see, watching baseball is sacred to me, and the beginning of baseball season each year is sacrosanct.

Back when I was writing a baseball column for Dirty Water Sports, the owner of the newspaper at the time would buy me a ticket to Opening Day at Fenway Park each season, where I would usually sit alone in the ballpark while my fellow travelers would make merry at The Baseball Tavern on Boylston Street.

In April of 2015—and I’m almost certain that I’ve written about this before, but I’m getting senile in my advancing age—I was sitting in the grandstands on the third base line by myself when Tom Brady suddenly appeared from The Green Monster² waving the Lombardi Trophy after the Pats beat Seattle in the Super Bowl that February.

I remember making a squeeing noise like a teenage fan-girl and screaming, “Tommy! Tommy! It’s Tommy!”

But I digress.

These days, the Red Sox will almost never open at home due to the potential of a snow-out in New England, so my Opening Days are generally spent at some local watering hole—usually Chelby’s Pizza—where I’ll have a couple of cold ones and a hot dog and watch the game with some other like-minded baseball fans.

But for the true baseball fan, it is a holiday, a time of celebration. Like any place where a person decides to invest their time and faith, the reasons are vast and sundry and often deeply personal.

For some people, baseball season can bring back memories of a loved one, who might never be physically in the boxed seat next to you again, but you still know they’re there in the ballpark when you take in a live game.

For others, Opening Day is the symbolic start of spring that will soon cede the stage to the boys of the summer, the long days and lazy afternoons where there is time to enjoy this untimed sport and its pastoral rhythms.

For me, baseball season brings a new infusion of hope. When that first pitch is tossed on Thursday afternoon in Arlington, Texas, beginning the Red Sox 2025, there will be more than 1,400 innings ahead where anything can happen, 162 games to write a new story, a story that has never been told. In this, there is hope and infinite possibility.

Between Thursday and whenever the final out is recorded for the 2025 Boston Red Sox, I can also redefine myself, become a better man, and there is no clock, only a vague calendar subject to changes in days and start times.

Does this sound too melodramatic, too pie-eyed, too overly saturated in lavender-scented optimism?

I hope so.

Therefore, I’ll finish this with the phrase often apocryphally attributed to Ty Cobb in 1905: “Play ball!”

1. This year has been a bit of an anomaly. Friday is my 50th birthday, and the Red Sox start at 4 p.m. in Texas on Thursday. I could’ve taken off Opening Day, like I usually do, but I also get out of work at 2:30 p.m. Meaning I can work on Opening Day, arrive at a local establishment by first pitch then take my 50th birthday as my personal day. Life is full of these dicey little decisions. At 50, I realize this. ↩︎
2. It is entirely possible that I’m in that first frame. Look for me. I’m probably drinking a $12 Bud Light draft and screaming like I’m seeing The Beatles. ↩︎

Share your joy of opening day with Nate Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com