Opening Day. As a longtime aficionado of the great American pastime said recently, “If you have to ask, ‘For what?’ well, we just can’t be friends.” The major league baseball season is once again upon us. By the time this goes to print I believe every team will have hosted at least one game in its home ballpark.

When I was a kid in southern Ohio, Opening Day was always a home game. The team of my youth, the Cincinnati Reds, is the oldest professional organization. As such, until fairly recently, it was traditionally accorded the honor of playing the first game of the season.

The Opener was essentially a holiday in Cincy. Well, not just essentially, it truly was. Having a ticket to the first game was an excused absence from school. The Findlay Market Parade featured red convertibles and pickup trucks, maybe a couple of floats, and local high school marching bands. And anybody that wanted to join in was welcome. It started a couple of hours before game time and ended up at the ballpark. The fact that Cincinnati was home to a plethora of German breweries didn’t hurt the festivities at all.

I had the honor of attending Opening Day in 1971. It was the first one held at what was then the brand new Riverfront Stadium. And on April 5th, 51,000 fans sat in sunny but chilly 45 degrees to watch the Reds play the Braves. I got to my seat just in time to sing the last few bars of The Star Spangled Banner. I had wanted to arrive much earlier, but there was a bit of a transportation issue.

Not many freshmen in college back then had cars. I fell into that category. So when a fraternity brother of mine suggested we go to the game, I immediately said yes, but just as quickly asked how we were going to traverse the three plus hours from campus to the stadium. John said, “No problem. We’ll hitchhike.” You could actually still do that in 1971, without a moment’s fear that any trouble would ensue.

Just to let you know, I cleared my agenda with the two professors with whom I had classes scheduled that day. (Both were fans, thank goodness.) Dressed nicely so that someone would actually want to pick up a couple of college kids, John and I got a brotherly lift to the entrance ramp to the nearby Interstate. We dutifully stuck out our thumbs and rather quickly got a ride into Indianapolis. There, we had to sweat it out for a bit until a businessman headed to Cincinnati picked us up. He immediately recognized we were going to be late unless he stepped on it. Which he did. I’m fairly certain his speedometer never registered below 90 as he delivered us right to Riverfront just in the nick of time.

We joined my dad and sister who had come down from Dayton, and enjoyed the game, even though the Reds lost (7-4 to the Braves … Hank Aaron went 0-4 and Pete Rose 0-5). It was still light at game’s end, and we had Dad drop us off on the entrance ramp to the interstate headed back to Indy.

We weren’t having much luck until a young man and woman in a weather-beaten pickup truck were kind enough to stop. While my fraternity brother climbed into the cab with them, I got to ride in the enclosed back with what turned out to be all their worldly possessions. From what John later told me, the conversation started off something like this:

DRIVER: We’re on our way to Chicago. Is that anywhere near Illinois?

John assured them it was, and he spent an interesting couple of hours with them while I was sprawled atop several garbage bags of clothes.

The last leg of our trip was all done in the dark. Our new Chicago-bound friends dropped us off where we asked, but we spent quite a bit of time with our thumbs out before a professor from our university just happened by. He said later the only reason he picked us up was because we were so well dressed. (Thanks for the sport coat, Mom.) He was much more geographically knowledgeable than our other rideshare friends, and took us right to the front door of our fraternity house. And he actually thought that what we had done was pretty cool.

So did we. I’ve been to Opening Days in other cities since then. Alas, nothing else compares to that one in 1971. Different time, different era really. The grand old game goes on, however. As I hope it always will.

 

©MMXIX. William J. Lewis, III –Freelance Writer