Today Is Opening Day

PLAY BALL!

DoG but I think those two sets of words, Play Ball and Opening Day, are among the best two word combinations available to us in English. Even as we have to endure so much ongoing bad news from so many directions:

Tar Sands oil spills in Arkansas and Minnesota;

Murder of a District Attorney and his wife in Texas two months after the murder of one of his Deputy DAs;

Banksters paying Board of Directors more to look the other way;

Limited to no punishment for Banksters committing frauds and money laundering;

Victim blaming for the crime of being poor (oh yes, it is such a stress free life to wonder how you are going to stay alive while you determine which creditors/bills you can skip for a month);

And on and on it goes.

Yet for all the bad things happening here and around the world, for me, just knowing that the Major League Baseball season is back in swing puts things back in focus somehow and even lessens some of the pain. It may all be in my head but Opening Day allows me to believe that somehow things can be made right once again. Innocence or naivete? Of course. Yet it matters. Baseball still manages to overcome bad owners be they Charley Comiskey, George Steinbrenner, Marge Schott, or Jeffrey Loria. Baseball overcame segregation and racism. It has overcome betting scandals and performance enhancing drugs. It easily 'overcame' the revelations in Ball Four! that players were voyeurs, drunks, cheats (some on the field, some on their wives), and drug users.

Baseball doesn't have the set time to complete like basketball or football. Those nine innings might be completed in under two hours or might take four hours or more (with the latter more the norm these days.) It takes as long as it takes. A final score of 1 - 0 or 12 - 11 or 24 - 2. Each day is a new day, each season is abundant with hope.

So today, I have The Boston Red Sox against the New York Yankees on TV, Cincinnati has their parade and traditions, the game is on and GO REDS!

PLAY BALL!

And because I can: