#OpeningDayAtHome... now what?


The day after Opening Day is always a weird day for me. From the euphoria of Opening Day and coming down from that high of just a day filed with optimism and hope to just nothing. The same crushing reality is painfully apparent today. However, today feels more forever than in years past.
Watching old games from 8:30 AM and sipping on coffee (which is awesome I know understand why my dad wants to retire in San Diego), to re-watching the 8th inning of Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS, to wanting to finish the 12-pack of beers I was sipping on while the Kershaw no-hitter was finishing up because today’s brutal reality was starting to hit me. Even though I watched most of the games being shown yesterday I still got a similar euphoric feeling that I would usually get on a regular Opening Day. I felt the same feeling to just shout out the window “Happy New Year” to anyone would listen because it was Opening Day again. But as the bottom of the 8th was wrapping up in that Dodgers-Rockies game around midnight-ish Eastern Time I can say truly for the first time that I felt the unexplainable weirdness and sadness of this COVID-19 pandemic. I felt it because there was no tomorrow for baseball. That might seem silly since there are people reading this who know someone affected by this disease and have a more real attachment to this pandemic, but for me that was the moment, sitting at my girlfriend’s kitchen table sometime past midnight sipping on a beer. It was a moment of realization that tomorrow was just going back to this isolated reality that I and millions of people around the country have put themselves in since early March.
Since sports have gone away I have engulfed myself in everything Star Wars, but since the announcement that Major League Baseball was doing #OpeningDayAtHome, all I’ve wanted is to get back to reality and watch baseball again. The one interesting question that has become more of a burner in my head is this: when is the world going to get back to normal?
Now that Opening Day 2020 or whatever yesterday was for baseball in 2020, I understand how amazing a luxury being able to be a spectator in the wonderful world of sports. The candy shop is even better when you can’t walk in and enjoy it. Whenever it reopens I will be first in line. Until then, I will have the same anticipation that I had when I was riding the school bus home just wanting to sit in front of the TV and watch the Yankees Opening Day on tape, hushing anyone who even uttered anything related to baseball. So baseball take your time getting back, I’ll be ready to play ball and to the fans who feel just like me—stay safe until baseball returns so we can all come back and enjoy the greatest game and feel reality again.  

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