BASEBALL’S OPENING DAY: A DAY OF TRADITION AND HOPE ALL AROUND

By Edwin Cooney

Shortly after 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time today, April 5, 2010, at National Park in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama -- a lefty -- will throw out the ceremonial first pitch of the 2010 season.

Exactly a century ago, President William Howard Taft, inaugurated the presidential ceremonial “first pitch” tradition. The date was Thursday, April 14, 1910. President Taft tossed a baseball to the Washington Senators’ star pitcher Walter Johnson. After catching Taft’s toss, Johnson preceded to allow only one hit the whole afternoon to Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. In the middle of the seventh inning, the six-foot-two, 330 lb Chief Executive stood up and stretched. The people in the park followed their leader and have done so ever since. Thus the “seventh inning stretch” has become a baseball institution. The final score that afternoon was Senators one, Athletics zip.

Thirty years later, on Tuesday, April 16, opening day of 1940, Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians did the great Walter Johnson one better. Feller, “Rapid Robert” they often called him, threw a no-hitter against the White Sox at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. It was 47 degrees as Feller’s parents and sister Marguerite watched him set down the White Sox, striking out 8 and walking 5 men in the process.

Ah! But that very day another “pitcher” made almost as much news as the twenty-two-year-old Feller. This hurler (if you prefer), even better known than Bob Feller, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR, who would win a third presidential term that fall, delivered the first pitch at Griffith Stadium in Washington as he had several times before. However, this time there was an unfortunate hitch. FDR’s pitch decked Washington Post photographer Irving Schlossberg. Anything could happen on opening day!

Five years later on opening day, something did happen and no doubt everyone but Pittsburgh Pirates fans had a hell of a good laugh. It was Tuesday, April 17, 1945. Pirates’ shortstop Frankie Zak, a base runner on first (there was also a runner on second), was granted time to tie his shoe by the first base umpire. Instantaneously -- there wasn’t time for the home plate ump to inform the pitcher and the batter that time had been called — Zak’s teammate Jim Russell drilled Cincinnati Reds Bucky Walters’ pitch over the right field wall for a three run homer. When Russell reached first, however, he learned that because Zak had been granted time to tie his shoe, the home run was null and void. Cincinnati beat Pittsburgh that day 7 to 6. Had Frankie Zak’s and Jim Russell’s runs been allowed to score (Russell did drive in one run from second base with a single on the very next pitch), the Pirates would have had at least 8 runs to win the game. As another far more prominent “Frank” had discovered just five years earlier, opening day can be a bit treacherous! (Note: The next day, much to Frankie Zak’s surprise, his manager Frankie Frisch bought him a present. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, it was a pair of buckle shoes).

Six years after Frankie Zak’s debacle, opening day of the 1951 baseball season at Griffith Stadium would mean something quite different. The Washington Senators’ opening day, Friday, April 20th 1951, was clearly a day of presidential courage. Well before going out to the ballpark, Harry Truman knew he’d come face to face with big time trouble. Just nine days before, President Truman had dismissed one of America’s most popular war heroes, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Douglas MacArthur, for insubordination. The day before the president came out to Griffith Stadium to toss out the ceremonial first pitch of the Senators’ season, General MacArthur had made a magnificent speech before Congress that heightened millions of citizens’ sense of righteous patriotic anger toward the president. As Truman expected, he heard thunderous boos. He didn’t stay for the whole game, a Senators’ 5 to 3 win over the Yankees, but Harry Truman didn’t run away either.

Then there was opening day in St. Louis in, I believe, 1985. That day there were simply too many ladies at Busch Memorial Stadium for the number of available ladies’ restrooms so the ladies simply took over the men’s rooms. As you can imagine, the Cardinals have since corrected the problem. Ladies will put up with many things, but they insist on their right to use any “bathroom” when and as often as necessary. What, do you suppose, those Cardinals were thinking?

I’m convinced that baseball’s opening day possesses an influence beyond the practical, the political, or even the laws of science.

Those silly scientists invariably try to tell us that the natural orbit of the earth around the sun brings forth spring with its April showers and May flowers. Don’t you believe it! The raw truth is that it is baseball’s opening day magnetism that drags the sun across that vernal equinox.

The reason for that is simple: it is so that the very human stories of another wonderful baseball season may continue to gladden our hungry hearts.

Between now and that October date when the final baseball out or run is recorded, we’ll hear of victory and loss, injury and recovery. Even more significant, for millions, almost up to the very last pitch, hope will reign supreme.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY