The Cincinnati Baseball Historical Review No. 3: The Gift of Opening Day
The Gift That No Other City Can Open
At seven in the morning on April 3, 1989, I sprung from my bed, slid into my bleached jeans, slipped on my red and black Air Jordan’s, and squeezed into a one-size-too-small Cincinnati Reds shirt that I absolutely adored. I threw some water on my frazzled hair, ate something microwavable and grabbed my backpack before heading to school.
The walk to school usually took me about twenty minutes, but on this day it was about ten, being that I ran the last 100 yards. Upon arrival, I gave a good morning nod to my homeroom teacher, and made my way to my desk, unzipping my backpack, and pulling out the folded up March 30, 1989 sports section of The Cincinnati Post. I had 30 minutes before school began and I planned on catching up on the Reds spring training news and who was making the club coming out of camp.
This would be the closest I would get to experiencing Opening Day that year.
You see, I was living in Greenwood, SC., 482 miles from Riverfront Stadium. This was the first Opening Day where I would not have any idea what was going on in real-time during the game. Luckily, my mother had the genius idea to maintain our Cincinnati newspaper subscription after we moved that previous summer, It arrived by mail a few days later than the actual published date. Looking back, it seems unfathomable that I couldn’t read the game summaries until two days later, but there was no internet and no MLB TV, just the scores scrolling across the sports ticker on ESPN.
How did we ever get by?
Nonetheless, this Opening Day was obviously going to be strange. I had no one else to talk to about the game or the upcoming baseball season. In fact, there were not only zero Reds fans in Greenwood, South Carolina, but there were not many fans of baseball in general. All my new friends wanted to talk about was the spring football practices of Clemson and South Carolina. I didn’t know the Reds score that day until it flashed on TV. I didn’t know Paul O’Neill had four hits and three RBI’s including a home run. I didn’t know that they misspelled his name by forgetting an L in “O’Neill” on the back of his uniform. I didn’t know Johnny Bench threw out the first pitch. I caught the highlights that night, but had to wait two days to get the tidbits and nuggets that make Opening Day in Cincinnati a front page, pull out special section event.
Just one year earlier, I was sitting in English class at Holmes Jr. High School in Covington, KY secretly listening to Marty and Joe sing the praises of the new hot shot bespectacled rookie Chris Sabo. By the time time the game ended, I was already at home watching as Kal Daniels knocked in Jeff Treadway with the winning run in the 12th. My brothers and I were ecstatic, and I’m sure we went out to the backyard to recreate the scene (although secretly, I was disappointed it was Kal Daniels who played hero, because anytime he did good it meant less playing time for my favorite Red Tracy Jones. Curse you Kal Daniels.). The year before that, in 1987, I got to ride in the parade and go to the game thanks to my brother Chet winning an essay contest. It was my first experience being on the frontlines of the opener and I loved every second of it.
But 1989 was the first time I realized how unique Opening Day is in Cincinnati. As a kid, you think this is the way the season begins in every city lucky enough to have a hometown club. Every team has an Opening Day. Right? But once you are removed from the grandness, the spectacle, and the tradition, you understand how incredible it is to have an entire city, whether they are baseball fans or not, turn their attention to a game for a few hours in the spring.
The Opening Day tradition in the Queen City is well documented. We know of the parade. We know of the civic pride and businesses that get in on the fun. We know the stories of folks who have “consecutive Opening Day streaks” and the unofficial holiday that we celebrate. We know that it used to be the first game played every year, an unwritten rule, an homage to us being the home of the professional pastime, that baseball decided to undo in 1985 by scheduling two AL games an hour before the Reds (that is a story for another day).
Until you have been forced to gaze at Opening Day from afar, you don’t fully understand how incredible it is. It is magical. It brings hope. It’s why baseball is our pastime. It was born here. It was raised here. It’s one of very few things that we can say our Cincinnati ancestors experienced as we do. The game may be different and the modes of getting there have changed, but the common bond of rooting on the Reds is the same. And it is more than just who wins or loses the actual game on the field. Sure, we root for the home team, and act like it is the 7th game of the World Series, and we complain about line-ups or batting orders, but it’s the pomp and pageantry and philosophy that a new era has dawned, and our team is back to warm us from the frigid doldrums of a Cincinnati winter. The game doesn’t even feel like it is one of the 162 they play. It’s not a real game. It’s Opening Day! The Queen City gets to hold a baseball Super Bowl every year.
In 1991, the Miller clan moved to the suburbs of Detroit, MI and I went to Opening Day 1992 at the old Tiger Stadium. I, perhaps naively, thought that it would at least come close to the experiences I had in Cincinnati. I mean, I was now in a baseball town! There wasn’t going to be a Findlay Market parade and all-day coverage on TV/radio, but the excitement will be there surely.
I was wrong.
It was just a game with a few more people in attendance. You could have placed that game somewhere in July (if the Tigers where in first place) and you wouldn’t know the difference. Don’t get me wrong. Detroit is a great baseball town and I had many great times at that old park on Michigan and Trumbull. But they didn’t have an Opening Day, they, like every other baseball team, just had their first game of the season.
So why does it matter? Why is it important? Who cares about Opening Day?
We lose many things when we get older. We lose toys. We lose friends. We lose the sense of what is important and become adults and stress over things that we think are important. But anyone who has grown up in the tri-state for the last century and a half has been given a gift that no other city in the world has ever received. The baseball gods chose our specific region in the Midwest to birth the professional game. They gave the citizens that have woven the fabric that covers this great area something to care about, to rally behind, to share with one another.
And as the game changes, and our attention span gets shorter, we must never cast off this gift or take it for granted. It is the one thing we all can agree on and appreciate no matter what neighborhood we come from, or what school we went to.
For one day every spring, we get to open a gift together. And no other city in the world gets a gift like Opening Day in the Queen City.
You had me at the title. Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Unfortunately I find myself even further from my greater Cincinnati roots on this opening day. Thanks to satellite tv I can at least keep up with the Reds and plan my days around their schedule. I'll be making popcorn and supper will consist of hot dogs, not Kahns unfortunately, but topped with Cincinnati chili thanks to Amazon. And I'll reminisce about how my husband- to -be would pick me up from work at Drackett all those warm summer days ago, we'd pick up Frisch's takeout (not contactless) and take in a twi-night double header at Rverfront. Yes, much has changed since those days. We told Alexa to turn on I heart radio so we could listen to the spring training games. If we had to go somewhere we listened on our phones. We can catch Jim Day's podcasts. But one thing withstands the test of time-the love of the game. GO REDS!