Opening Day.

It can mean a lot of things, but to most people, the words mean the first day of the baseball season, the day on which all 30 teams still have hope that they'll put it all together and make it to the playoffs, if not all the way to the World Series.

I love baseball, probably more than anything in my life that isn't a person, and I've been thinking all day about what I would say to convey that. But so many people write so many things that sound so damned pompous about baseball. I think the single coolest quote I ever read about the game was from former Commissioner Bart Giamatti.

<em>"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."</em>

That was a cool quote, better than anything I could ever imagine saying myself.

I have followed baseball since 1957, the last year three teams played in New York City. The first game I ever saw pitted the New York Giants against the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field, a ballpark that was torn down more than 40 years ago. It didn't have a warning track. When outfielders got near the wall, they found themselves on an upward incline. Since it's harder to run uphill, I imagine they must have hated it.

[caption id="attachment_310" align="alignright" width="245" caption="1969 Opener in D.C."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/490px-Richard_Nixon_throwing_out_opening_pitch_at_Senators_game_1969.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-310" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/490px-Richard_Nixon_throwing_out_opening_pitch_at_Senators_game_1969-245x300.jpg" alt="" width="245" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

I remember two opening days, in back-to-back seasons.

In 1984, when I was working in South Carolina, I attended a rainy opener at Atlanta's Fulton County Stadium. Philadelphia's Steve Carlton shut out the Braves and then didn't talk to the media, as was his wont. Four summers later, I saw Carlton at an exhibition game in Denver when he was trying to hang on. He talked plenty then.

In 1983, the year before, I was covering the Gastonia Expos of the South Atlantic League. Roger Kahn of "Boys of Summer" fame was a part-owner of the visiting Columbia Mets. I was interviewing him, but it was too cold for him at Sims Legion Park, so we went to my house five minutes away and he drank most of a fifth of my vodka while I interviewed him.

Those are my memories, memories I treasure.

I'm pretty sure I'll love baseball long after I've forgotten about almost everything else I've ever known.

It's like Jim Bouton wrote in the final paragraph of "Ball Four," quoting former pitcher Jim O'Toole:

<em>"You spend all those years gripping a baseball and then you find out it was the other way around."</em>