Opening Days

It was Opening Day recently, a time when all teams were tied for first place for at least a day and when you felt maybe this year your team had a chance.

It’s when hope springs eternal, to quote Alexander Pope (although baseball wasn’t around yet when Pope, the English satirist, stuck his quill in ink and wrote that). Or, if you’re more contemporary and are not afraid to admit knowing it, it’s a song off an Air Supply album. (I once was lassoed into seeing an Air Supply “concert” at a Christian college; they didn’t turn off the auditorium lights for fear that someone could be overcome by the music and fall in love with somebody.)

There was a time when Opening Day was the greatest day of the year for me – other than Christmas. It came when the harsh winter of northern Minnesota where I grew up was coming to a close and it meant my elementary and high schools would soon end for the year. The grass was greener, the air felt fresher and it seemed we could hit the whiffle ball a little further in our backyard games.

But lately it hasn’t meant as much to me. A case in point is that I’m just now writing about it, nearly two weeks after Opening Day.

Sure, I watched the scores, and I still will. I tried to find the Twins’ opening game on a Minnesota radio station on the internet, but the game was cancelled due to cold weather. I ended up “watching” the Cubs’ opener against Milwaukee on MLB.com’s "Gameday" website.

Had I wanted to listen that game I’d have to subscribe to a website service. At an economic time when I don’t even have cable, I couldn’t justify spending the money on that. I couldn’t imagine telling the wife, “We can’t pay the light bill, but, by golly, we can listen to the A's-Blue Jays' game.”

Maybe I’m losing the excitement of Opening Day merely because I am older. The age difference between me and the players is widening each year. When I was a kid, I looked up to the players, thinking they were grown up heroes. Now, I think they’re spoiled kids and I think the team owners are, for the most part, tight-fisted, greedy men. Business has invaded the purity and magic of a child’s vision of baseball.

Maybe it’s because baseball has changed. “Ghost runners” in extra innings? Designated hitters in the National League? Clayton Kershaw being pulled after pitching five perfect innings (against my Twins) because of his pitch count? What’s happened to the game? Can you imagine Red Schoendienst sauntering to the mound to pull Bob Gibson on Opening Day 1968 because Gibson was nearing 100 pitches? Gibson would have decked Red and then kept on hurling.

Maybe it’s simply because the enthusiasm of being a kid, the enjoyment of things like Opening Day, has been pushed to the back burner of my consciousness, replaced by grocery lists, meeting the monthly bill nut, trying to stay healthy, being a good provider and all.

But there still is some sense of an Opening Day I can feel. It’s with our APBA game. I’ve done baseball replays since 1998 and I began rolling the dice with the game company in 1977 when my parents bought me the APBA football game.

Obviously, I’ve not had an Opening Day each year. It takes a long while to complete a full-season replay. It took me nearly four years to play the entire 1991 season because life stepped in. During that replay, I met my wife-to-be, was laid off from my newspaper job of 20 years and had a scary health situation. The games were no longer a priority.

But there are still Opening Days in APBA. They don’t necessarily coincide with the real Opening Day of any season. I began the 1965 baseball season I’m on now back in December 2020. My Opening Day of the 1972 I’m planning to do next will probably be near the end of June.

I’ve had Opening Days for APBA’s hockey game, too. And despite being so much older than when I first started this hobby, there’s still that charge of seeing my hand-written standings page. The won-lost columns are blank because the games have yet to be played. On Opening Day, replayers begin the journey of a season, learning the teams’ stars, the pitching rotations and lineups. Someone will hit the season’s first home run and away we go. After that first game is over, I write in pencil the "1" under either the two teams' won and lost columns.  And it begins.

So, despite not getting too worked up for the real Opening Day, I still have a venue to feel the excitement I did when I was a kid. I’ve had 13 Opening Days since rolling the baseball game and each one brought back those memories of the real day when the players took the fields.

1965 Pennant Races

Just when it looks like a team is going to take a commanding lead in my 1965 APBA baseball replay season, the team either falters or another team gets suddenly hot and creates a close pennant race.

I’ve played about half the games scheduled for Sept. 8 in the 1965 season. Both Minnesota and Cincinnati had four-game leads in their leagues at the end of August and looked poised to easily roll through September and into the World Series. But then baseball happened.

Detroit won eight games in a row in September so far and Minnesota has lost three of seven games. The Twins now have a half-game lead over the Tigers and now face the Chicago White Sox. Detroit hosts Baltimore in its next contest.

In the National League, the Reds, anchored by the pitching of Sammy Ellis’ amazing 21-3 record and Frank Robison’s bat, seemed ready to claim the crown by August 31. The St. Louis Cardinals, which had led the National League for most of the season, did a late summer swoon, going 14-16 in August. The Redbirds have regrouped only slightly, winning four of seven games through the eight days in September, but Cincinnati was swept by Pittsburgh and lost two of three to Philadelphia – all at the Reds’ home stadium. They’ve won three of eight to start the month.

Meanwhile, there are four other teams in the National League that have a chance, including Pittsburgh, which has won seven of eight in September, including that sweep of the Reds.

And San Francisco has been streaky. The Giants won three in a row and then lost two in Philadelphia. Then, they won four before dropping one to Los Angeles. The Giants’ next 10 games are against Chicago and Houston, both pretty poor teams. They end the season with a three-game set hosting St. Louis and then four games in San Francisco against Cincinnati.

So, at Sept. 8, 1965, here are the pennant races now:

AMERICAN   W         L         GB

Minnesota     88       53        --- 

Detroit           88       54       0.5

California      75        67        13.5

NATIONAL   W        L          GB

Cincinnati     85        54        --- 

St. Louis        83       57        2.5

S.Francisco   80       56        3.5  

Los Angeles   81        60       5

Pittsburgh     81        61        5.5

There have been some great games of late. For example, with two outs in the top of the ninth in a Sept. 6 game, the Giants and Dodgers were knotted, 1-1. Koufax was on the mound for Los Angeles, hoping to shut San Francisco down and giving the Dodgers a chance in the bottom of the inning. Willie Mays had a different idea and clubbed his major league leading 40^th home run. Giants won, 2-1, after Bob Shaw got Ron Fairly on a pop up, Lou Johnson on a ground out and Wes Parker on a fly out.

In the first game of Pittsburgh’s double header with Cincinnati, also on Sept. 6,  the Pirates took a 6-4 lead into the bottom of the seventh. They scored when Frank Robinson, who walked and took second on a ground out, crossed the plate after a Johnny Edwards pinch hit single. In the bottom of the ninth, trailing by one run, Robinson hit his 38^th homer. It was his fourth in six days. But in the top of the 10^th, Roberto Clemente hit a triple, driving in Bob Bailey and then scored on an error and the Pirates won, 8-6.

It’s been those kinds of games lately, when each one really counts. The first replay season I ever did was the 1998 season; Texas won its division by 20 games and the other races weren’t much closer. The 1965 season looks like it could go down to the wire with close races in each league.

It’s been a great season when you have Clemente and Robinson and Mays and Harmon Killebrew and Norm Cash stepping up to the plate with a game on the line.