Baseball's Opening Day and the New Cubs
Yesterday was Opening Day for the 2025 season. I won’t
pretend I’ve been following baseball closely for the last 5 years because I
haven’t. Clicking through some of my old journals, I stumbled across one from
last year with “baseball” in the title. My first thought was, “What’s this? I
hardly watched any baseball last year”. But it was a preseason explainer to
myself about why my interest had waned. Covid was the culprit, no surprise. Still,
that was 4 seasons ago. Why bring it up? Because it’s just about the time I
checked out. The George Floyd riots and the Black Lives Matter craziness,
forced me to ignore sports for a while. I’ve probably mentioned this a lot in
other places where I’ve written, but using sports as a platform to divide the
country was unforgiveable to me.
The MLB allowed and promoted that.
While not unforgivable, it forced me ignore it for a few
seasons. I remember seeing a preview of the Chicago Cubs doing long toss at
Wrigley right before a game. Most of the players adorned with Black Lives
Matter t-shirts and smiling like they were at the lake on a Sunday afternoon. I
think I was at the gym looking up at the TV which was tuned to ESPN. Similar
events happened all year like that. Athletes gave bland statements of support
for the violence happening all over the country; to me it looked insincere. I’ll avoid going into that morass too deeply. Nothing was real,
certainly not the genuflecting to left wing activism that these athletes participated in.
Whatever…I’m glad it’s over.
This spring I started listening to a couple of Cubs podcasts
again. Mostly, the idea was to familiarize myself with a team I don’t know
anything about. I used to call myself a fan but the title just doesn’t fit
anymore. Would I like the Cubs to win? Absolutely. Are the Cubs my team, as
much as any baseball team can be said to be “my team”? For sure. But true
baseball fans follow their team much closer. I’m more of an interested party in
the team’s success. Frankly, I don’t want to watch even 100 games during the
season. The regular season is 162 games. Baseball isn’t conducive to the modern
attention span. It’s too slow. Soccer is slow too but there is always action
around the ball.
Major League Baseball has tightened up a few rules to make
the game a little more fan friendly. They’ve put a clock on the pitcher so he
can’t shake off the catcher 3 or 4 times and keep going to the rosin bag. It’s
20 seconds. That seems about right. The national league is now using the
designated hitter rule. Not sure if this speeds the game up, but it does likely
add more scoring opportunities. Another rule change is adding a runner to
second base in every extra inning. This was made permanent 2 seasons ago. The
idea is pretty simple, increase the chances of scoring and getting out of the
game. Some of these 13 and 14 inning games destroy your pitching staff. A lot
of guys have to pitch more innings than they should.
Remember it’s 162 games during the season. Burning up your
pitching staff for one win is costly for the next series of games. I imagine
everybody was for this rule. It seems like an easy one. As for reducing the
time between pitching changes, every pitcher has to face at least 3 batters or
go to the end of a half inning. If you realize how much time gets eaten up
bringing in a specialist to deal with a good hitter, it makes sense. I’ve seen
games where the team puts in a reliever just to face one batter. Then, he exits
the game and a second reliever is brought up to finish the slate of hitters.
Every change requires a new pitch and catch warm up routine with the catcher
until the new guy is ready to go. I think advertisers are the only ones that
like it. They can jam in a few extra commercials with every change.
Opening Day is this baseball thing that football doesn’t
have. In football it’s just the first game of the season. I have friends that
treat Opening Day like a holiday. They take off from work and spend the day
watching multiple games. One of my buddies posted a picture of him and his son,
with Royals hats and sunglasses just outside Kaufman stadium. What a cool
tradition for them. Why is Opening Day such a big deal? I googled it just now.
I guess it has something to do with hope and optimism for the season. Everyone
still has a perfect record and all of that. It’s spring too, which does feel
like an awakening from winter. Warmer weather is on the way, even in Chicago.
I said that everyone team has a perfect record just before
opening day. That’s True for all but one team. Can you guess which one? Right,
it’s the Cubs. Technically their season opened in Tokyo this year against the
World Series Champion Dodgers. So everyone but the Cubs are perfect. No
worries, spring is here and baseball is in the air. Go Cubs!