The Evolution of Opening Day

From Joy to Reflection and the Quiet Battle Within

It’s Opening Day!

So many of my associations with Opening Day revolved around joy and brotherhood. My childhood relationship with baseball was shaped by my big brother, and our battles over Wiffle ball and Strat-O-Matic. It was all tied together with an early connection in fandom to the powder blue uniforms of the Philadelphia Phillies. The excitement built from there.

Now, at age 54 and with the shine of a major league career fading, my memory for those days resembles the fine print on a children’s Tylenol label that is becoming more difficult to read as the years pass. I am still reminded that the enduring joy I feel for baseball has always been partnered with a sense of heaviness.

Alongside the jubilation was always some trepidation. A low-grade fear that evolved as my relationship with baseball changed. My 70s and 80s Phillies had good teams, but growing up in North Jersey, they also had to be good enough to maintain my bragging rights over my peers and their New York fandom.

And on Opening Day, the challenge began.

In my baseball journey, there was an interesting period of transition from being a fan to putting on the uniform with ever-growing stakes. As I moved from high school to college to the pros, Opening Day took on new meanings. It came to include a new sense of urgency rooted in a desire to advance and a requirement to perform well.

For a time, the untethered joy of competing was enough to drown out failure. After all, many of us with the good fortune to play in MLB were local stars with failure as a distant theory. I hit around .500 my senior year, so it felt like a coin toss of success that allowed me to use a short memory to triumph over bad outcomes. In some ways, my intermittent varsity appearances during my freshman year were a good lesson in humility, but in others, a celebration of achievement as a boy amongst high school men. I remember hitting a home run at age 14 in a varsity game, which caused my coach to walk across the field to the visiting dugout, breaking etiquette to do so while I trotted around the bases. He unabashedly told the opposing coach I was “just a freshman.” And so, expectation began.

Opening Day became a proving ground.

My college career opened in a way that brought Wally Pipp into my baseball lexicon. A few upperclassmen violated a team rule enough to get a suspension. One happened to be the starting center fielder. The next day, my coach called me into the office to ask me which was my favorite outfield position. I said, “Center field,” and that became home.

That remained home even through the blur of the constantly changing geography of Opening Day as a professional. The United States, Canada, or beyond. I opened in Daytona Beach, Puerto Rico, Des Moines. There were multiple openings in the same season. Home openers at home, home openers on the road. That disorientation fueled the questions about direction: Was I moving forward in this game?

Opening Day became the quiet release of a tightly wound toy, slowly spinning in place until its body came to a stop.

On my first MLB Opening Day in 1997, I asked Cubs teammate and veteran Mark Grace about nerves just to see if all-stars felt nervous. He confirmed the gigantic flying dinosaurs that circled his stomach. It was then that I understood that my emotions would change with time too. I would still love the game, but I would become more aware of how my career would be like holding on to a wet baseball while trying to hit the cutoff man, your grip slipping over time.

Opening Day brought a sense of nervous tension.

As time marched on in my professional career, I knew what I held was fragile. Injuries that took my tools, the loss of my father that cracked the presence of a soul mate, meeting my wife which defined a future I never knew I wanted. The realization that, while you may be one of the best, you were also competing against the best, with a never-ending cycle of new talent ready to compete…and take your job.

What became more evident was that the toughest competition came from within. You beat yourself as much as the other guy beat you. It could have been because of a bad plan at the plate or a sore shoulder, but it was also from the creeping and fluctuating doubt in a game that could flatten you if you didn’t stay focused. Then, place that doubt against the Opening Day backdrop of being 0 for 0 with no data to provide the comfort of knowing where you stand. 0 for 0 was both an opportunity and an abyss.

My first opener with the Phillies was at Shea Stadium after I had spent the previous night in an ER trying to stave off dehydration. Confidence is important, but it can be shaken and stirred with what life throws at you. I went 0 for 6 that day after an outstanding spring training. The next day, I faced Al Leiter and broke that .000 average, thankfully. But for a minute, I thought, “I could look up and be 0 for 10.” Baseball is always compiling. You cannot stop it.

Opening Day shifted your mind and body into competitive overdrive.

As a veteran, experience put you ahead—you fought your body while you sharpened your mind. You knew who you were, but you were in a boxing match with the gravitational forces of inevitability. This was a game for the young or for those that could deny aging. Not just in physical form, but in mindset. The hunger, the edge, the energy to play 162 games.

For us, Opening Day was the day you started counting.

I used that wisdom when I was due to face a young Gavin Floyd in his first spring training. He was the hot Phillies pitching prospect who threw seemingly 1000 mph with a great curveball. It was the first day of live batting practice. I was the leadoff hitter and knew that there was a good chance Floyd would be so amped up he would hit the first guy. So, I sent “rook” Marlon Byrd up in my place, and sure enough, Floyd drilled him in the side. A few years prior, I would have been Marlon Byrd.

As the curtain drew on my career, and the doubt moved from wondering if I would perform to wondering about my capacity to perform, there was a connection to how I would feel today about Opening Day. In a blink, you can go from the fifth outfielder to the starter to the aging veteran to the last gasp. As I held on at the end, I considered what it all meant, and soon questioned if I would be remembered—and how I would be remembered. My end was not fully my choice. I was called into the office by Brian Cashman and Joe Torre when I received my final walking papers. I knew I was not a lock to make the team with my missing hamstring tendon and a so-so spring, but I thought I was a good fit to handle the role of being Bernie Williams’ caddy.

As the audience left after that final act, I sat backstage and reflected on the emotions of those days. I wondered about mattering to the game with any level of permanence. As careers were measured by numbers and relativity—metrics that were not even discovered during my playing days—you could feel your name slide to the bottom of lists that once marked your place. And the game was different, even in your own eyes.

So many players today who are joyous, excited, and confident, are also feeling doubt, uncertainty, and the weight of time. And that is ok. It means it matters.

Opening Day is one of reflection and contemplation.

I still have the good fortune of celebrating another Opening Day. Now more years out of uniform than in, I am always preparing to call a game while learning new tricks to stay ahead, just like a veteran pitcher with declining velocity. And in the end, we all fight, scrap, and hope to secure something that is so elusive, yet so important to the soul.

On Opening Day, we all strive to find relevance.