Shortstick
4/13/04

With no lack of trying on my part, I haven’t been to an Opening Day at Dodger Stadium in 20 some odd years. From what I can remember, this one wasn't much different than the last one I went to, except that I took my grandma this time instead of the other way around. You see, opening day is sort of campy and cliché, in which the festivities seem to play out at stadiums across the land. A standard checklist of opening day “musts” goes a little something like this:

Patriotism is very important. Teams must do something special with the flag and if they are lucky enough, someone famous needs to sing the national anthem.

Trot out the stars of the past. This works on a couple of levels. If the team has no chance, it serves as a reminder when things were actually good. For fans of teams that might do well, remembering the “good ol’ days” is just a bonus.

Have somebody cool throw out the first pitch. Sometimes teams get really, really lucky and have the Pres do the honors. If a team is really unlucky, Commish Selig is on hand to do the deed. If you don’t have the pull to get the Prez, use the stars of the past to throw out the pitch. Fans will love it!

Birds are a very important part of an opening day. I don’t know why this is important, but at the 3 opening days I have been to, birds have been involved. The Dodgers seem to like releasing pigeons, while the Angels used “Challenger” the Eagle at their opening day a few years back.

Though not from the Dodgers' Opening Day, the Angels proved a few years back that having birds at opening day is pretty imporant.

The list is certainly incomplete, but from the opening days that I have witnessed, the items listed are almost like scientific laws. The Dodgers held up their end up the bargain this year. Patriotism was on display with Navy Parachute Dudes bringing a flag in from the heavens, a large flag balloon bouquet thingy taking up most of the outfield, and Brad Paisley singing the national anthem. Plenty of past Dodger stars were on hand as well, with guys like Fernando Valenzuela, Tommy Lasorda, and Maury Wills being introduced to the crowd. In fact, the crowd went apeshit when Fernando was introduced. Given the demographic of fans on hand, this came as no surprise. The Dodgers weren’t lucky enough to have the Pres toss out the first pitch, but they made up for it by having their Cy Young award winners who were able to attend the game throw the first pitch (or is that pitches?) To make sure they covered all their bases, pigeons were released. I don’t know what pigeons have to do with opening day, but seeing a few get lost on their way out of the stadium is always a treat.

Even with the campiness of the festivities, we baseball fans buy into it and love it. It’s almost like the 7th inning stretch. There is no logical reason to get up and sing a song after 6 ½ innings of baseball, but for whatever reason, it’s cool. Other writers have done a much better job romanticizing “Opening Day” than myself. I’m just going to say that it’s something every baseball fan should witness at some point during their lives. It’s even better when your family gets to go with you.

Something about opening day makes the actual outcome of the game not as important as any other game that fans will attend the rest of the year. Then again, I might just be saying this because the Dodgers got clubbed by the Padres, but I still left the game satisfied enough to write an article. The only really troubling part of the game was the Dodgers getting 15 hits and only scoring 2 runs (and 2 hours of traffic on the way home). I had some nasty flashbacks to last season! Even though the game wasn’t great, I got some cool pictures of Shawn Green, Eric Gagne, and Jim Tracy while they were handing out the ever cool magnet schedules prior to the game. I would have had more pictures, but my digital camera decided that it didn’t want to read the card anymore.

Aside from the home opener of the Dodgers, I present some random thoughts from the opening week of the 2004 season:

Fat Men Shouldn't Wear Sand Colored Uniforms
Giggles and I were watching the tail end of the Dodgers-Padres game on Tuesday night when Antonio Osuna came out of the bullpen to pitch for the Padres. Antonio is a bigger guy these days and a sand-colored uniform doesn’t do him justice. Luckily David Wells didn’t pitch during the series. It’s probably a good thing that Tony Gwynn retired. Then again, this is the Padres we are speaking of. Outside of the last decade or so, the Padres have had some of the ugliest uniforms in the history of baseball. Just in case you have forgotten, here are the past “styles” the Padres have fashioned over the years:	Unfortunately (or maybe it was a good thing), I wasn't able to find a picture of Antonio Asuna or David Wells in this horrible looking uniform.

The MLB Extra Innings Package is the coolest thing ever…
One of the coolest things about the Extra Innings package is getting to hear the hometown announcers for the various teams. It’s not like all of them are great, but you get a pretty cool feel for the teams you watch. Of course, you get stuff like I heard tonight from the Royal’s announcers: Announcer 1: It’s hard to get Ken Harvey to chase a bad pitch Announcer 2: Blah Blah Blah

Of course, Harvey went down swinging after chasing a couple of bad pitches right after they said that. It made me wonder how hard it is to actually strike Harvey out. I looked at his numbers from last year and saw that he struck out 94 times in something like 524 plate appearances last year. In other words, there is an 18% chance he is going to strike out every time he comes to the plate. I don’t know about you, but if he is striking out that often on hittable pitches, perhaps he shouldn’t be in the line-up (or something like that). I hate to nitpick, but I just found it funny that the announcers would proclaim something about him not chasing bad pitches and he promptly swings at ball 4 twice and strikes out. I also had my first chance to hear Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow, the Giants announcers, on TV for the first time. My bro actually decided to watch another game last night because he couldn’t stand listening to them any longer. Even though I have heard some bad stuff, it has been nice to watch and listen to Joe Buck doing the Cardinals games without all the silly bullshit that Fox throws in when he announces a national game. Mark Grace was also fun to listen to when I was watching the D-backs the other night.

Break up the Tigers
How many times have baseball fans read a similar headline this week? It’s really cool for the fans of Detroit to see the Tigers win their 4th game of the season before the second week of May, but as much as we want to pretend, a season isn’t made in a week.

That’s not to say that the Tigers aren’t going to do better this year, because they probably will. It takes a “special” team to be as bad as the 2003 version of the Tigers. Heck, the Yankees were playing .500 ball by the end of the week. I seriously doubt the Yankees are only going to win 81 games this year. If they do, Steinbrenner should ask for a refund for his bloated payroll. Perhaps this is why the statheads preach the “small sample size” rule. Ignorant writers and fans can talk a ton about how the game is played on the field and not on a computer, but the small sample size rule holds true no matter what. 8-10 games won’t predict the rest of the season (though they might indicate trends). Fans of good teams shouldn’t worry too much. Fans of bad teams that win early on should enjoy it while it lasts. Anyhow, I’m off to see Petco Park in person next week. Hopefully I can get some cool pictures without my camera crapping out on me! Perhaps I can write an article about it next week, but if I don’t, I might just post a picture gallery and a short blurb about the stadium.

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Shortstick 4/13/04

Shortstick
4/13/04