Here’s an idea. Maybe we can let the Japanese run their season opening sumo tournament at the United Center. The place is going to be empty in about a month and it is familiar with large men going splat.
As a gesture of global goodwill, the least we can do is invite the Hiroshima Carp and the Chunichi Dragons to open their baseball season in Wrigley Field.
Go, you Carp. They can have the days the Mets and Cubs would have been using the ballpark. Never been much interest around here in a Mets-Cubs series, not like in Tokyo.
To paraphrase the commissioner, Bud (Jet Lag) Selig, the internationalization of baseball has begun.
Who asked for it? Who wants a quote real unquote World Series, anyhow? Has baseball caught David Stern Disease?
Some things are ours. Some things are not for sale. Some things are not reckless whims of galloping idiots. Opening Day is one of them, right near the top, along with the 4th of July and the Sopranos.
Should we run the Kentucky Derby in Dubai just because somebody might pay for it? Maybe we can play Game 7 of the Stanley Cup in Prague, where there is a good chance half of the players live anyhow. No good reason not to hold the Boston Marathon in Monaco, except that it would have to be run in laps.
The second greatest unofficial holiday in America is Opening Day, this after the Super Bowl, of course. And although the Super Bowl always has been for sale, so far it has been restricted to this country and occasionally Atlanta.
I mean, what’s next, Wisconsin in the Final Four?
Next to canceling the 1994 World Series and not canceling the designated hitter, this is the stupidest idea baseball ever has had. The Cubs either have won or have lost their first game of the year, and anyone who actually saw the game is still too sleepy to be reading this.
More Top Picks Annex Room
Opening Day has become Opening Dawn. Excuse me, time of the seventh inning yawn. When did Opening Day go up for auction? And were the Japanese the low bidders or the high?
Japan needs another baseball game like it needs another hatchback. If baseball wants to spread its message, shouldn’t it be going somewhere it’s not? This is like sending sheets to John Rocker.
I’m thinking the Dominican Republic might like one, or Cuba. Ever thought of trading a three-game series between the Braves and Marlins for, say, Elian Gonzalez, the boy, not the shortstop.
Maybe Opening Day will be shopped around in the future. Selig hinted at such. Last year Mexico. This year Japan. Next year Chad.
Forget jet lag and time zones and body fatigue, all the usual stuff that ordinary folks who do business internationally put up with all the time. The Cubs will be whatever the Cubs are–usually dead by July. So this year they croak a week earlier. No big deal. The real torture for the Cubs will be coming home to road series against St. Louis and Cincinnati.
If the Mets, authentic contenders, lose again to the Braves because of something that happened 7,000 miles away, they should welcome the alibi.
No the real crime here is in the contempt for tradition, the disregard for baseball’s essential fabric, the diminishing of the rite of renewal. The beginning of baseball is more than just the first of many games. It is the coalescence of hope, the union of optimism and community. Nothing is ever more promising than the first pitch of the first game.
In Chicago this optimism usually lasts only until the third inning or so, but that is no reason to peddle it to the Orient. Let them have the All-Star tours or the exhibitions. Opening Day is ours.
This is just wrong. Did we have a bit more appreciation for soccer when the World Cup was here just because the games counted? Not at all if the groundswell of soccer apathy is to be believed.
And another thing. One of the great blessings of American baseball is its insularity. We may call it the World Series without involving the whole world, but that is our conceit and our business.
Let the British call their cricket championships whatever they want or the Pakistanis their field hockey finale the Match of the Universe, for all I care. Just keep them where they belong.
To quote from an actual Japanese baseball fight song–“Man blooms as a flower on the earth. Baseball is a drama, it is life … Fly away Yakult Swallows.”
Makes “Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Goodbye” seem so deliciously crude. So American. Yeah.