The Curtain Rises
Opening Day.
The sun shines a little brighter. If baseball was a fairy tale, the narrator would begin: "Once upon a time..."
This Opening Day, for one day at the very least, hope beat fiercely in the chest of a region and a team that's looking to bring playoff baseball back to Seattle for the first time since 2001.
Every year, we hear the cliché that "hope springs eternal," but this year, for the Seattle Mariners, those words actually mean something. After a second straight offseason splurging on a high-priced free agent meant to bolster their hitting, they're now a challenger, perhaps even a favorite, to win a division title. Hosting the reigning division champions, the Mariners introduced their offseason acquisitions and their familiar faces via a long red carpet stretching from the gates in right-center field. While high-priced DH Nelson Cruz might have been the pre-game center of attention, it was RF Seth Smith, brought in as one-half of an outfield platoon, who provided the M's with a couple of extra base hits and keyed a 4-1 win to begin the 2015 campaign. King Felix, the team's undisputed heart, allowed a 1st-inning inning home run to Los Angeles/Anaheim's Mike Trout, who seemed to have the Felix's number (apart from the two strikeouts later in the game.) Trout also leaped to steal a home run in center field later in the game, burnishing his credentials as the best player in the majors. But apart from that blemish, Felix set down the Angels with such speed and efficiency that it would make Lucifer himself jealous. Dustin Ackley tacked on the Mariners' first home run on the year, and the bullpen's performance hinted that 2014's solid performance wouldn't be a fluke. The glory of Opening Day is that the scoreboard starts with zeroes and it is baseball for baseball's sake. The correlation between winning a World Series title in late October and winning the first game of the regular season in early April has to be non-existant. The best fairy tales begin inauspiciously, so this day of pomp, circumstance, and brightly-shining suns was probably a little too good to be true. And with the King reigning in his Kingdom, a sold-out Safeco Field, Mariners racing across the paths and an closing arrow arcing across the sky, the opening chapter of this tale was, in itself, an afternoon of living happily ever after.
This Opening Day, for one day at the very least, hope beat fiercely in the chest of a region and a team that's looking to bring playoff baseball back to Seattle for the first time since 2001.
Every year, we hear the cliché that "hope springs eternal," but this year, for the Seattle Mariners, those words actually mean something. After a second straight offseason splurging on a high-priced free agent meant to bolster their hitting, they're now a challenger, perhaps even a favorite, to win a division title. Hosting the reigning division champions, the Mariners introduced their offseason acquisitions and their familiar faces via a long red carpet stretching from the gates in right-center field. While high-priced DH Nelson Cruz might have been the pre-game center of attention, it was RF Seth Smith, brought in as one-half of an outfield platoon, who provided the M's with a couple of extra base hits and keyed a 4-1 win to begin the 2015 campaign. King Felix, the team's undisputed heart, allowed a 1st-inning inning home run to Los Angeles/Anaheim's Mike Trout, who seemed to have the Felix's number (apart from the two strikeouts later in the game.) Trout also leaped to steal a home run in center field later in the game, burnishing his credentials as the best player in the majors. But apart from that blemish, Felix set down the Angels with such speed and efficiency that it would make Lucifer himself jealous. Dustin Ackley tacked on the Mariners' first home run on the year, and the bullpen's performance hinted that 2014's solid performance wouldn't be a fluke. The glory of Opening Day is that the scoreboard starts with zeroes and it is baseball for baseball's sake. The correlation between winning a World Series title in late October and winning the first game of the regular season in early April has to be non-existant. The best fairy tales begin inauspiciously, so this day of pomp, circumstance, and brightly-shining suns was probably a little too good to be true. And with the King reigning in his Kingdom, a sold-out Safeco Field, Mariners racing across the paths and an closing arrow arcing across the sky, the opening chapter of this tale was, in itself, an afternoon of living happily ever after.
