Opening Day does not belong overseas

If you have read my columns before, you may have noticed that I like this time of the year. One of the reasons is Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season.

It is a grand institution in our country. There is a reason why Thomas Boswell wrote a book called, "Why Time Begins on Opening Day." Or that George Vescey once said that it, "beats back the forces of darkness." Or that it has its own Wikipedia entry, which says that it signals, "a generational feeling of rebirth."

Opening Day has been beloved by fans since the first professional baseball team was established in Cincinnati back in the 1860s. That is not a typo. The eighteen sixties.

Cincinnati continued to play the first game of the Major League season for 114 years in a row, prompting one author to write that Reds fans consider Opening Day, "one small notch below Christmas."

This year, however, America's second Christmas was taken away from it when the Red Sox and A's opened the season in Tokyo several days before the rest of the league started its regular season games. Major League Baseball wants to expand its horizons and delve into an untapped reservoir of fan attendance and revenue.

I understand why the league wants to do everything it can to promote itself and make money. That is why the owners are in the business. But I think there comes a point when they have to be more concerned with what is in the best interest of the fans, the players and the game itself.

Part of the allure of Opening Day is that it signifies the end of exhibition play and the start of the real deal. That feeling disappeared this year. I talked to several people who were confused and did not even realize that those games counted in the standings.

Should that be the way the season gets underway, when the fans do not even realize which games count and which do not? And who can blame them? After all, both Boston and Oakland played several exhibition games after they started the regular season.

I think all of Mike Tyson's press conferences have made more sense than that.

The American fans, particularly those who have been so loyal to each of these teams, deserve better than that. Of course it is good for the Japanese fans to actually be able to see regular season games, but the promotion of the game to the American fans should be first and foremost, and part of the reason the game became so popular to them was the excitement of Opening Day.

It is the excitement of being in the seats for the first time in the sunshine of spring, the smell of the freshly cut grass, the taste of a good ole American hot dog at the ballpark.

Forgive me, but it just is not the same tradition to have it in Japan, with the taste of wonton and sushi and the smell of the artificial turf in the din of the Tokyo Dome. I never thought to myself as a child, "Uh oh…Mom and Dad have had too much Sapporo and sake rice wine on Opening Day again."

Do not get me wrong. I appreciate the Japanese people and how much they follow the game, and I am not opposed to having exhibition games in Japan so that their fans can see their favorite teams and players.

But regular season games should not be played there, not only for the reasons already given, but also for the simple fact that it is unfair competitively for both teams. Having to travel halfway around the world and then be expected to win more games just a few days later puts those squads at quite a disadvantage.

Plus, the defending world champion Red Sox deserved the open the season in front of their home fans. They deserved to be honored for their achievement right off the bat. Their fans deserved to able to call in sick to work and school, all to cheer on the team that they love.

In 1954, Wilson Sports Equipment ran an ad in The Sporting News the day before Opening Day. In it, a bony school teacher leans over her desk with a yardstick and says to one of her students, "So Johnny, I see you plan to be sick tomorrow."

May we all be "sick" on Opening Day, and cheer our favorite teams to victory. Because, as hall-of-fame pitcher Early Wynn said, "You know that when you when that first one, you can't lose them all."

Let us please make sure, though, that those games get won and lost here in the good ole US of A.