Baseball's "Opening Day"

For those of you who don't know, Major League Baseball began its 2008 season this morning in an extra-inning 6-5 victory for the Boston Red-Sox over the Oakland A's...in Japan. While the rest of the league still has a few more meaningless days of Spring Training to round into shape and fill those 25th roster spots, the season started earlier than it ever has in relative anonymity. For myself and many others, the start of the baseball season carries with it some deeper significance than just the first of 162 games. It signifies that winter is coming to a close, that for much of the year, when nothing else is on TV or the radio, there will be baseball somewhere. It's impossible to explain but there are very few sweeter phrases in the English language than "opening day." Now, I know I am treading on dangerous ground here, but I figure no one reads this anyway, so why not write? Before I go on and sound odd, shortsighted, and jingoistic, I want to try to explain where I am coming from. For most of the twentieth century, baseball held a central role in the heart of American culture, and with every season opener we experienced a sense of rebirth and hope that has a tendency to dwindle in the cold gray months of winter. No other sport's season opener carried with it the sublime grandeur and beauty that is the baseball opening day (football, for all its energy and popularity is a gross spectacle, often carrying on for hours before kick off, celebrating artists with too much money and hawking their latest album).
I still remember going to a home opener at old Busch Stadium for the Cardinals with my father, when I went to school in St. Louis. At one point, just before entering the stadium, I looked out across the streets of the city. I was struck by the sight of a sea of red pouring towards the stadium. Business men had called in sick, children had played hooky, all to witness the start of something bigger than themselves. This wasn't the forties, it was only a few short years ago. And yet, you could feel that connection to the families that had done the same thing decades before. Baseball's season opener, more than any other sport, exists at once as a window to the past, a celebration of the present, and hope for the future.
As for "Opening Day," I'm starting to have an issue with this Japan thing. First of all, I didn't get to enjoy the Yankees and Rays kick off the season last year, and now opening day baseball happens at 6 am on the east coast? I'm all for integration and globalization of baseball, but ESPN Sunday night baseball opener (normally the Yanks or Sox) used to be a big night for me. Just hearing the soothing baritones of Jon Miller and the slight nasal basses of Joe Morgan signified that baseball had returned to make everything right with the world again. Now the opener is played at an ungodly time in the morning (here) because Bud Selig desperately wants everyone to forget about steroids. At heart, Bud is a used car salesman, his primary concern is always going to be how to get the biggest billboard on I-95 or the cheapest radio commercial on 1010 WINS (take the debacle of the team staffs not initially being compensated for a trip around the world for three baseball games). There is no other sport that has made opening day so culturally meaningful over the past century, and (I know I am going to sound xenophobic here) now more than ever it should remain a central part of our culture, not auctioned off to the highest bidder.