Sights and sounds from Spring Training Opening Day
Spring Training is chicken soup to the baseball soul, a soothing treatment after a long, static winter.
And on this day, Opening Day of the spring season, the sun always hits a little different. Not that Arizonans are unfamiliar with the concept of year-round sunshine, but there is a different feel to it.
Because baseball is finally back, and it’s as if Mother Nature is celebrating the occasion, as well. I’d like to think Mother Nature is parked in a seat down the third base line, backwards ball cap, spitting sunflower seeds, soaking in the spring sun.
The ballpark hums a little more than usual on this day, too. Outside of Goodyear Ballpark — an hour out from the first pitch between the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds — a band comprised of older gentlemen provide live music. Young boys and grown men alike eagerly stand in the ticket lines, with their baseball gloves attached to the hip, as if Cleveland Indians’ manager Terry Francona might make a mid-inning pitching change and summon them from the stands.
“Great day for a ballgame, isn’t it?” the worker scanning my ticket asked me.
“It really is,” I said.
But isn’t it always?
I sat in right field, fifty-or-so feet from Yasiel Puig’s new spring office.
He was traded to Cincinnati from Los Angeles in December, and will be patrolling right field for the Reds this spring at Goodyear Ballpark.
He was a fan-favorite in Los Angeles, and that certainly won’t change when he gets to Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.
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“PUUUUUUIIIIIGGGG!” a fan in the right field bleachers bellowed as the 28-year-old played catch in the outfield.
Puig modestly tipped his cap, opting to store his antics and emotions in his back pocket until the regular season.
At 1:05, Reds’ leadoff hitter Tucker Barnhart dug into the batter’s box, marking the first at-bats for Cincinnati this season.
A group of already-drunken Reds fans behind me questioned the move from rookie manager David Bell to pencil a catcher into the lead-off role.
“A catcher leading off?” one scoffed to his liquor-laden buddies. “Why do we have a catcher leading off?”
He said ‘we’ as if Bell and the Reds’ front office should have consulted him before the game, just checking to see if he approved of their lineup.
There was a foul ball that clanked around the Indians’ dugout, then trickled into the territory of Reds’ first baseman Joey Votto.
Votto examined the ball, then flipped it into the stands and into the glove of a young Indians fan. The boy, decked head-to-toe in Tribe gear, wore a face of disbelief. I think he seriously contemplated ditching the Indians gear and converting to be a full-time Reds fan, courtesy of Votto’s generous gesture.
Professional athletes can be such polarizing, superhuman-like figures to kids. For such a seemingly easy deed for Votto to toss the kid the ball, I can guarantee it’s something the young boy will never forget.
Matt Kemp, joining Puig and others in the package Los Angeles sent to Cincinnati last winter, homered to left field in his second at-bat. One young fan yelled, “I love you, Matt Kemp!”
Kemp couldn’t hear, for he was preoccupied with rounding third base, but I’m sure he would have appreciated the message.
That’s all for Opening Day.
I really missed these sun-splashed afternoons at Goodyear Ballpark.
