Voices: Opening Day has a beauty all its own

It's not an official holiday but it comes with capital letters.

Opening Day isn't even a specific day — but it's so special that it counts wherever you are and whenever it starts, from millionaire players in multi-decked stadiums to tykes marching in a parade and deciphering the rules on the first day of T-ball.

This, obviously, is the big one, the start of the Major League Baseball season and, equinoxes be damned, the start of spring.

Eleven games will be played Monday afternoon across the USA — Opening Day as generations knew it growing up — when it's supposed to be crisp, sunny and regenerating.

Twenty years ago this month, the season began on just that kind of day at historic Yankee Stadium. It was a season delayed by the work stoppage that wiped out the previous year's World Series. If ever a nation needed what Opening Day brings.

The old stadium in the Bronx had a narrow tunnel that led to the field from the Yankees clubhouse — up the steps to a dewy field beginning to get some morning sunshine through the gaps between neighboring high-rise buildings.

That day, musician Chuck Mangione was to perform the national anthem. Well before the gates were open or batting practice had begun, he was in the on-deck circle playing what he pleased on his flugelhorn, the only sound in an oasis amidst the bustling Big Apple.

Pausing at the bottom of the dugout steps to soak in the scene, I heard behind me, "Pretty amazing, isn't it?"

It was Yankees pitcher John Wettleland.

That's what Opening Day is in our minds. Beautiful all on its own. In reality, no, the conditions aren't always idyllic and, like much of baseball and its place in this country, Opening Day has changed.

Now, we have an annual — this hardly deserves "traditional" as an adjective — Sunday night opener squeezed onto TV in the never-ending sports cycle between the men's Final Four semifinals and championship game.

And this year's Sunday night game is at Wrigley Field of all places, the last major league stadium to submit to night games.

It's sometimes played amid snow squalls with players in ski masks — especially those from more tropical Latin American climes — wondering "Where's the magic in this?"

I've had an opener in Cleveland completely wiped out by snow. In 1907, the New York Giants forfeited their opener when fans pelted the field and the Philadelphia Phillies with snowballs.

That was even before the days of grainy news reels showing the president throwing the season's first pitch in Washington — from his front row seat in the stands, not the mound — into a crowd of players from both teams who went after the ball like bridesmaids chasing a wedding bouquet.

That tradition began with William Howard Taft in 1910 — in case you wondered why he was added to the lineup of the current Washington Nationals' popular Racing Presidents.

Cincinnati — where the first pro game was played — still opens at home every year but no longer gets to the be the first pitch anywhere.

This year's first pitch Monday, in one of those day games that create the traditional Opening Day that's still ingrained in this country's culture, is scheduled for Yankee Stadium.

It will be thrown by the Yankees' Japanese pitcher Mashiro Tanaka to Jose Reyes, a Dominican playing for the Toronto Blue Jays, representing Canada.

Nothing stands still and maybe "America's pastime" is no longer the most appropriate description for baseball, but it's still Opening Day.

Play ball.

White has been covering the major leagues for Paste BN since 1988