An Ode to the First Game of the Year
Seeing the Royals for the first time every year is special. It’s more fun when they win.
As you walk through the gate in left field to enter Surprise Stadium, you’re instantly met with the perfect confluence of a game that is meaningless and something so much more. The smell of hot dogs and kettle corn and perfectly manicured grass stings the nostrils. I know I’m a baseball romantic but I will never walk into a stadium for the first time of the year and not appreciate just how special it is. It gets even more special when your toddler is with you and looking around with the same awe I’m sure I did decades ago (and honestly probably still do now). Sure the credit card bill comes due on the souvenirs and the food that goes largely uneaten, but the memories made in those moments will be remembered long after the money is spent.
It also provides such an interesting moment for me as someone who wants so badly to analyze something…anything. The result of the game is truly meaningless, but every moment matters to the individuals. At the same time, baseball is a game that can fool you with small samples and there is basically no smaller sample than one game, particularly one game that nobody plays all nine innings. And yet, there I was, frantically putting notes in my phone about how this pitcher looked or how that batter reacted to situations. What exactly can you learn from these games? The answer is somewhere between nothing and something, which I know is a thrilling piece of fence riding that you subscribe to learn.
Yesterday was kind of a treat of a game to attend. The starting lineup featured most of what I anticipate we’ll see on Opening Day with only Kyle Isbel missing. It was the first outing of the spring on the main field for Michael Lorenzen, but also included Chris Stratton, Kris Bubic and Lucas Erceg. To see four legitimate big league pitchers in a spring game in early March is somewhat rare. The Mariners countered with quite a few likely members of their big league staff, so it felt like there might actually be more to learn than a typical game would offer with more than three weeks to Opening Day.