Opening Day 2022

                 Opening Day

Baseball was the first love of my life. I can still remember the first time I laid eyes on the sport. Almost like love at first sight. It remains as one of my earliest memories, I walk into the living room of our old townhouse and I see my dad sitting down watching the television. I take a look at the television and see 9 men on a diamond shaped field and ask “What are you watching?” 

“The Orioles,” he replied. 

I don’t remember my response, I don’t remember if I watched but I know that from that moment on my youth revolved around Baseball. I had an old video that I would wear out that was the first game at Camden Yards, April 6, 1992. I would watch that video so many times I can still remember seeing Albert Belle playing for Cleveland on the tape and knowing that he was now on the Orioles. Almost as if this game was a prequel movie to the movie I would see every night watching the Orioles on HTS. 

One of my earliest most prized possessions came to me before this when I was a baby, it was an Orioles Teddy Bear that I creatively named Teddy. We went everywhere together. He survived his stitch coming loose in his stomach, losing an arm, a cousin ripping his head off, and even a loss of an eye. But Teddy survived and had his pieces reattached or replaced like The Six Million Dollar Man. I loved him even more despite his flaws, he stood as an example of the current state of the Orioles team itself at times. Beaten, defeated, and cobbled back together with pieces that barely worked. But still I loved him and the team even more as time went on.  

Not long after learning the sport and watching the sport I was playing the sport! I was always practicing the sport, playing games of rundown in the basement with my parents and sister, going in the backyard and tossing the ball to myself and hitting it early in the morning before school, practicing the exact batting order of my Orioles and imitating their stances: Johnson, Conine, DeShields, Bordick, Ripken, Surhoff, Anderson, Belle and Baines. I would practice pitching and perfecting Mike Mussina’s pitching windup, the way his elbow would tuck into his body as his leg kicks up, hoping to one day follow his steps and pitch for the Orioles. Always being the hero, never striking out, always striking out the side, the Orioles always won in my yard. 

But it was a different story most of my life at The Yard. 

We would go to many games a year, My sister and I were members of the Orioles Dugout Club and would have a package of games we could go see. We would sit in the cheap outfield seats, or upper level behind home plate. My dad taught me how to score a game which we would take turns doing in our scorebook, usually being disappointed in the score during the late 90s early 00’s as the Orioles would lose more games that I attended than they would win. We would go to batting practice and try to snag some home run balls. The sights and the sounds would overwhelm my senses, the immaculately kept field, the well trimmed, patterned grass, the crack of the bat, the sound of a ball hitting the back of a glove, the smell and taste of the peanuts and the sunflower seeds. I could go on and on about the sensory overload the ballpark provides, and the moments that come to mind when I think about baseball. 

While the Orioles were bad for most of my life, they were always number 1 in my heart of my sport teams. The memories that stick with me are more than the team's record, more than the playoff runs and feelings of happiness. What sticks with me the most is the love of the game passed down to me from my parents before me, and sharing in their love of this team that dons the orange and black. They grew up watching greats like Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, and many more. I grew up hearing them spin the tales of these great players more than I have actually seen highlights of them. Baseball is a sport of history as much as it is a sport of today, and the here and now. The National Pastime. 

So I sit here on this chilly and rainy Opening Day of the 2022 season. Spring is finally here, I’m waiting for my O’s to play tomorrow anxious as to what this season may bring (hopefully not another 100 loss season), just soaking in the fact that my first love is back and thinking a thought many have said in Ken Burns’ Baseball, Bull Durham and Moneyball, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”