Opening Day

It was Opening Day this past week.  I was not at the ballpark cooking up brats and swilling down cold beverages.  But, I was thinking about the first day of major league baseball as I was speaking with a guy who was in Omaha. When I mentioned that it was Opening Day the guy’s voice lit up. He started to wax on about the beauty of this particular Opening Day because his Chicago Cubs were beginning their defense of their World Championship.  He told me about watching and listening through losing seasons with his Dad, and the unfettered joy of “Game 7” last October when Cubs fans patience was rewarded.  Here we were, me cheering for a Milwaukee Brewers team which advertises that it is “rebuilding” (again) and him cheering for a team thinking they are destined to “repeat”.  Yet we both were full of Opening Day hope: “this could be our year!”

“Hope springs eternal” is an over-used phrase, but it truly does apply on Opening Day.  Everyone is tied for first place. Everyone hopes that this will be the year their team becomes the “Miracle Mets” or the big league version of the “Bad News Bears”: a bunch of misfits who stumble upon a winning formula. On Opening Day, everyone is a potential winner of the biggest prize, and people fill the ballparks to celebrate that hope.

I know it is just coincidental, but I love the way that Easter Sunday happens near Opening Day.  Easter is “Opening Day” for so many people of faith. It is the day they “re-set” their faith clocks; it is the day that they come to hear about how, no matter where their life finished in the standings last year, this year could be different.  This could be the championship year for their faith, the year they discover how to produce more victories than losses. So the crowds line up and fill the stands waiting for those beautiful words that mean hope is here: “Play ball!”  The Church’s proclamation is the same: “He is Risen!” Those words mean it is time to start living a new life under new power and with a new focus.

It’s almost “Opening Day”, friends. Don’t miss the first pitch of what just could be the best season your life.  

P.S. My Brewers beat Mr. Omaha’s Cubs last night in extra innings. I’m telling ya, this could be the year!