The sacredness of MLB Opening Day

By: Andrew Nowel, Sports Layout Editor

With an energy just like Christmas morning, I raced to my closet this morning bright and early to put on my Bryan Reynolds jersey. Reynolds, the left fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, is a player that I have followed for many years, and as a massive Pirates fan myself, I excitedly step out into the cool Buffalo air with one thought on my mind: today is Opening Day.

For those of you who don’t like baseball because it’s “too slow” as Luke Adamo puts it, I counter with: it’s baseball. Those who get it, get it, and those who don’t, won’t be able to understand the joy of the last Thursday in March. However, I will explain it in simple terms. Major League Baseball (MLB) begins its grueling 162-game season on the last Thursday of March every year, and the MLB has coined the phrase “Opening Day” to commemorate the start of the regular season. As the years have gone by, not every team plays on Opening Day, but the idea that majority teams begin on one day revives the spirit of spring across the country. Baseball, being America’s pastime, brings the warmth of family, friends and fun all together. Convinced yet?

As the National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League (NHL), yes very creative names, begin to market themselves by going away from traditional openings to their seasons to bump up ratings, the MLB, this season, decided to begin the 2026 season on Wednesday night with a primetime matchup of the New York Yankees and the San Francisco Giants. Only the game didn’t look primetime, as the Giants hosted with a 5 p.m. start on the West Coast. During most of the game, it looked like the game was being played in the afternoon, which defeats the purpose of a primetime game. Also, a game between the Yankees and Giants isn’t a marquee matchup as the Giants aren’t the World Series winning team they were 10 years ago.

Turning to the broadcast of this “stand-alone” game, Netflix had sole rights to the game, its first-ever MLB game to stream live on the platform. As good as the announcers were, with Matt Vasersian and C.C. Sabathia at the helm, the scorebug was too small and during a split screen while Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. was mic’d up, there was no scorebug, so viewers at home easily lost track of the game. The scorebug is a crucial part of sports as it gives the viewer real-time data about the game, involving both teams’ stats and other tidbits about the game. Without the bug, fans are left confused on what the count is or even who is on base.

There were other good and bad things about the Netflix MLB game last night, but the point is, nothing should take away from Opening Day. Many baseball fans wake up just like I did with a feeling of pure happiness, thinking about the long journey their team is about to take on. Even a Colorado Rockies fan comes into game one of 162 with the hope that a parade could happen in November later this year after a World Series. As unrealistic as that may seem to baseball fans, every team begins the season with a chance to take home the glory.

If you still won’t watch baseball because of the speed of the game, it’s okay, you can’t fathom the smell of the ballpark on a summer afternoon or the crack of the bat followed by the roar of the crowd. Just like Terrance Mann, played by the late James Earl Jones, said in “Field of Dreams” about the game of baseball, “They’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. They'll watch the game, and it'll be as if they'd dipped themselves in magic waters. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game – it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.” As first pitch of the Pirates game begins the new season and Paul Skenes takes the mound for the first time, there’s only two words that need to be said: play ball.