Opening Day!

I will remember staring at the teams last week, reading through the names slowly, one by one...and finding mine on our Michigan team! I get to still do this, and I couldn't be more thankful. In the circus of days that followed, we packed up our gear, made arrangements for getting our cars home, flew to Michigan, drove from Detroit to Midland, practiced for two days, met our boosters, received all our uniforms and gear from our team, got settled in our host family's homes, and then drove down to Dayton, OH for our first series! To say that it was a little crazy is an understatement. But as baseball players, this is what the early morning lifts in the off season is for, why we spend a month training in Phoenix, and why we pack up and leave all our friends and family behind for 6 months. To play baseball under the lights with fans in the stands and with something on the line. Now of the 140 games we will play over the next 152 days, there is one that stands out among all the rest. One that no matter how long you have been playing, the butterflies still get you, Opening Day! There is a quietness in the locker room before the game, a nervousness, an excitement that has been building for months now. No matter how you played last year, what your stats were, what team you were on, or if you were injured, this is a totally new year. Nothing of last year or years matters now, it is just this year. And something that makes Opening Day special, is that every team is undefeated, every pitcher has a perfect ERA of 0.00 and every hitter is hitting 1.000! I like the idea of new beginnings, of redemption and feeling new again. If a player looked back and always remembered his failures of the past then it will lock him up to succeed to his full ability in the now. I wonder if there is something deeper there than just a baseball season? Something that is inside all of us, where we desire to feel new again? What if that was possible to have a new 'season' of life? I believe there is...