Take Me Out To The Ballgame...

Monday afternoon was everything baseball's opening day should be: sunny, almost seventy degrees; throngs filling Miller Park to capacity; the hometown Brewers in crisp white uniforms, heroic, lithe and testosterone laden.

The world of the fan is a swirl of pungent aromas. It begins with forty five thousand eight hundred and eight people in close proximity, many sweating beer. Add to that a variety of high notes: popcorn over here, pizza over there, bratwurst all around, and beer, beer and more beer. The sweet and sour mix signals spring's arrival.

While one can anticipate the stadium's "surround-smell environment," a winning game is less predictable. Alas, the boys of spring were inconsistent, leaving multiple runners on base at innings' end. As Abba Eban once quipped (not about the Brewers) "they never miss(ed) an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Yet, the magic of opening day trumps the final score. Who cares who won? The season has just begun; there will be another one hundred and sixty one opportunities to win. What's more, baseball infuses the coming months with the possibility of existential redemption. As Roger Angell wrote in Once More Around the Park:

"Baseball is the writer's game, and its train of thought, we come to sense, is a shuttle, carrying us constantly forward to the next pitch or inning, or the sudden double into the left-field corner, but we keep hold of the other half of our [train] ticket, for the return trip on the same line. We anticipate happily, and, coming home, reenter an old landscape brightened with fresh colors. Baseball games and plays and mannerisms-the angle of a cap-fade stubbornly and come to mind unbidden, putting us back in some particular park on that special October afternoon or June evening. The players are as young as ever, and we, perhaps not entirely old."

 -Rabbi David Cohen