Today is Thursday March 29, 2018. Yes, it’s Thursday Blog Day. Yes, for sports fans, the NHL and NBA regular seasons are wrapping up and the playoffs are just around the corner. It’s almost April, so the weather is about as “all over the board” as it gets during any part of the year. Those warm fronts that make it feel so much like Spring?  You know it’s here but it can quickly be erased by the last great blasts of Canadian air. This Sunday is Easter and April Fool’s Day all wrapped up into one. I’m assuming there will be a few tweets that combine the two in gag fashion.

But today is the day. Today is special. Today is Opening Day. Today, baseball is back. Sure, those of us who are big fans have been paying attention to what’s gone on in Florida or Arizona during spring training, even to the point of watching a few televised games knowing full well that by the fourth or fifth inning the lineups were going to feature guys wearing numbers like 76 or 68. Guys even avid fans wouldn’t recognize. It was still baseball, and some of those guys had such impressive springs they became known. Some even beat all the odds and made the club. It’s baseball.

Opening Day (absolutely worthy of those capital letters) is special. It’s different. No other sport opens its season with such anticipation, such focus, and such “meaning” to so many of us, while spread out over so many venues and cities, basically all at once. Not the NFL, not the NHL, not the NBA. Not NASCAR, NHRA, or IndyCar. Not soccer, pro golf, or tennis. In the cases of racing, putting, or serving, those sports open with just one event in one place. Baseball is different. Baseball season is more than a long series of games. It’s a time of year. It connects the dots that get us through April, May, June, July, August, and September. We can only hope for October.

It signals the end of another long dark winter. It really is spring, even up here in Minnesota where we’ve melted more snow in the last three days than we have since November. Opening Day means spring and summer, and even fall, absolutely must arrive soon. Of course, there will be a few games played in ridiculously cold temperatures where the outfielders wear stocking caps over their hats, and one or two may be snowed out, but this Sunday is April and today is Opening Day. The petulant early spring weather won’t last for long. Baseball forces the issue, and before long we’ll be sitting in short sleeves on incredibly beautiful evenings, again marveling at how cool Target Field is. Or Busch Stadium. Or Fenway Park. Or Wrigley Field. Pick your favorite.

It also signals the start of the longest season in sports. Today, everyone is 0-0. 162 games from now, we’ll see who advances to the post-season. Between now and then, baseball is a daily companion. Your favorite team will play 162 times between now and September 30.

And don’t worry if your club loses a few to start the season. This isn’t the NFL. You’re not already out of it if you start 0-6. It’s not even the NBA or NHL, where 40 losses mean you’re most likely on the golf course when the playoffs start.

In 2001, the Oakland A’s started 8-17. They finished the regular season 102-60, and in the playoffs.

Our Minnesota Twins got off to a 9-15 start in 2006. They ended up winning the AL Central, with 96 wins.

I’m trying to figure out exactly when little Bobby Wilber began to realize that Opening Day was a significantly bigger deal than just about any other day of the year, with the possible exception of Christmas. Even in that regard, there was a huge difference. Opening Day started something that spanned the final couple months of school, all of summer vacation, and if your team was really good it could get you all the way into October, just as you were about to decide what costume you’d wear for Halloween. On Christmas, the presents were all opened by 9:00 in the morning, at the latest, and then you faced the agony of realizing it would be another 365 days (a huge hunk of your life in childhood) before it would return.

In 1963 I turned seven. I clearly remember following the St. Louis Cardinals and attending games at the older of the two “old Busch Stadiums.” I would guess that Opening Day of 1964 would then be the first one I really understood to be special. Baseball was back. Listening to games on KMOX, with Jack Buck and Harry Caray, was back. In the end, the Cardinals won the pennant and then beat the Yankees in the World Series. I got to go to Game 6, with my mom.

By 1967, I was fully indoctrinated into the magic of Opening Day. I knew every player on the Cardinals. I even knew the names of the batboys (Don Deason and Jerry Gibson.) My mom was working in the Cardinals front office, and I counted the days until Opening Day. It was April 11. They played the San Francisco Giants. Anyone close to my age can probably guess who the starting pitchers were. Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal. How’s that for a way to start the season? The Cardinals won 6-0 and Gibby struck out 13. Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Roger Maris, Tim McCarver, and Julian Javier all collected two hits. Dal Maxvill, a career .217 hitter, went 3 for 4. Go figure. By the middle of the summer, in ’67, Orlando Cepeda had clearly entrenched himself as the team leader, and the fans began to refer to the club as the El Birdos. It was a heck of a time to grow up in St. Louis.

By the early 70s, when I was in high school, my friends and I made a big transition. We started going to the games with our buddies, or possibly with dates, instead of being driven to Busch Stadium (the second one, with the classic arch-shaped openings in the overhanging roof) by Mom or Dad. And that made Opening Day even more special.

A school year, at that age, seemed to take forever. Each one was a massive part of the life you’d led to that point. Opening Day was a beacon. It was a lighthouse on the shore of yet another spring and summer. It was the signal that freedom was nearly at hand. Even going to school became easier when it wasn’t 25-degrees and sleeting. By my junior and senior years, I was going to games with my pals or a girlfriend at least 30 times per season. Opening Day made it all real.

It’s the only regular season game with such pageantry. Individual player introductions on the foul lines. Colorful bunting hung from the railings. Special guests on the field making presentations. And for a Cardinal fan, it provided the extra pleasure of seeing the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales make a lap around the field, pulling the historic beer wagon. It could give a 16-year-old boy goosebumps. It did every year.

Once Barbara Doyle and I moved to Minnesota in 2002, our Opening Day allegiances shifted to the Minnesota Twins. As documented in my book “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” it wasn’t a stark or massive shift for me. I’d grown up as the son of the Twins top scout and Instructional League manager, with a TC hat on my head, despite the fact I also rooted for the Cardinals. I’ve always been a Twins fan. In 2002, I was just lucky enough to come “home” to Minnesota and the Twin Cities.

After our first year here, I felt like I knew TV announcers Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven personally. Just about every night, from early April until October, those two friendly guys were welcomed into our living room. I still haven’t met Dick Bremer, the play-by-play voice of the Twins, but I’m fortunate enough to know Bert. And Dave St. Peter, the President of the Twins who personally welcomed us to Minnesota just months after we moved here. I’d taken the initiative to send him an email, letting him know I was Del Wilber’s son and therefore a lifelong member of the Twins extended family. I didn’t really expect a reply. I got one the same day. We’ve stayed in touch and Dave was the first person to agree to be part of our Advisory Board when we launched The Perfect Game Foundation. This blog would not be here without TPGF and all the Advisors who helped make it happen. After all, you’re reading it on the TPGF website.

From 2002 through 2009 we followed our Twins both on TV and at the Metrodome, as season ticket holders. It was a quirky place with more than a few reasons why it might be deemed unsuitable for baseball, but it also had a charm and character about it. It was a perfect example of the old saying, “This place might be a dump, but it’s OUR dump.” And there was the year Barbara and I met at the Dome for Opening Day (which was technically Opening Night) because I had been traveling and had to get there straight from the airport. We watched the game, rooting for our Twins, and when it was over we walked back out those unique Dome doors, being pushed by the escaping air, to find that nearly a foot of snow had fallen while we were comfortably and obliviously inside. All the cars in our parking lot looked like igloos. We had to press the “lock” buttons on our key fobs to figure out which cars were ours. It was dump, but it was our dump and it looked nicely festive with all the bunting on the railings.

In 2010, when Target Field opened, we shifted our season tickets to a 20-game plan and by the luck of the draw we had Game 2, but not Opening Day. We loyally watched on TV and couldn’t wait for our first game. We drove to Minneapolis very early, knowing we had to scout out new favorite parking lots and find our way around a different part of downtown. We marveled at what a magnificent “ballpark” it was. It’s even better now. And in mid-game we heard a strange murmur coming from the other side of the park. It grew into a cheer, and swept across us like a wave. It was raining. We were outside! At a beautiful spectacular marvel of a ballpark. It was worth cheering about. This time, it’s a gorgeous ballpark, and it’s OUR gorgeous ballpark. We’re proud of it. It’s all ours. I can’t wait to use the Flex Plan app on my phone soon. We already have box seats for the game on April 28, because my incredible wife came into my office yesterday and said, “I thought about what I really want for my birthday. If the Twins are home on the 28th, I want to go the ballgame.”  Happy to oblige!

As for me and Opening Days, as I approach my 62nd birthday, I had the pleasure of being directly involved with five such special occasions, as a pro. In 1978 my Paintsville Hilanders, of the Appalachian League, opened on the road against the Bluefield Orioles, and their gangly young shortstop named Ripken. We got to line up on the first-base line. One night later we opened at Johnson Central Park in Paintsville. The 700+ fans in the tiny grandstands seemed like 7,000. The next year, after Spring Training in 1979, we traveled by bus up I-4 in Florida and lined up on the first-base line before we played the Daytona Beach Astros on Opening Day. We got to do it again, two days later, at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland before our home opener in the Florida State League. We were the Lakeland Tigers. In June, I relocated from the lower right-hand corner of the country to the upper-left hand region, to join the Medford A’s in the Northwest League. It was an honor to shake the hand of our owner, Doug Emmans, as I joined teammates I’d only met that day. I had made it to Oregon just in time for Opening Day. I’ll never forget it.

It’s Opening Day. There are tiny buds on many of the trees as Minnesota breaks free of winter. It’s spring. The sun is out. Our Twins are in Baltimore to play the Orioles and as I’m typing this the game is but minutes away. I’m sure the Orioles have a lot of great stuff planned, but after all of that, and the handshakes on the baselines, there will be a baseball game. The first of at least 162 between now and the end of September. Here’s hoping we get bonus baseball in October. But that’s a long way off. Today is Game 1.

Today there is hope. Today there is anticipation. Today hot dogs will be consumed by people how haven’t ingested one since last summer. Today, there is baseball. Happy Baseball, everybody! It’s Opening Day.

Time to get this blog posted. Now, my attention will be firmly focused on the TV. Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven will be visiting again. Welcome back into our home, Dick and Bert. Win Twins!

Thanks everyone. May you all enjoy another great season of baseball.

And, if you just read this blog and enjoyed it, please “Like” it by clicking the button at the top. See you next week!

Bob Wilber, at your service and ready for baseball.