Baseball Opening Day

TITLE: [Umpire making the call on a man sliding into home plate during a baseball game between Washington and the Boston Red Sox], CALL NUMBER: LOT 12344-1 [item] [P&P], REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZ62-135484 (b&w film copy neg.)No known restrictions on publication.

Digital ID: cph 3c35484 Source: digital file from b&w film copy neg. Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-135484 (b&w film copy neg.) Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Retrieve higher resolution JPEG version (148 kilobytes)

MEDIUM: 1 photographic print. CREATED, PUBLISHED: [between 1910 and 1930], NOTES: Title devised by Library staff. Forms part of: National Photo Company Collection (Library of Congress).

REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. DIGITAL ID: (digital file from b&w film copy neg.) cph 3c35484 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c35484. CARD #: 2005676963

Credit Line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-135484]

MARC Record Line 540 - No known restrictions on publication.

Opening Day, From Wikipedia

Opening Day is warmly regarded in North American tradition as the beginning of a new Major League Baseball season. It falls annually around the beginning of April, signaling such a generational feeling of rebirth that the writer Thomas Boswell once penned a book titled, Why Time Begins On Opening Day. It represents a newness in which 30 major league clubs and their millions of fans begin with 0-0 records and the hope for glory come autumn's World Series.

For generations, Opening Day has arrived amid pageantry. It is celebrated nowhere as heartily as in Cincinnati, Ohio, home of the sport's first professional team, where an annual parade marks an unofficial "city holiday" with young and old alike taking the day off to cheer on the Reds. Although the past decade has brought the introduction of a Sunday night opening game on ESPN, the ensuing Monday brings Opening Day to numerous major league ballparks and the game that day in Cincinnati (the only team which always opens the season at home) still is observed throughout baseball as the "traditional opener." Opening Day is a state of mind as well, with countless baseball fans known to recognize this unofficial holiday as a good reason to call in sick at the office and go out to the ballpark for the first of 162 regular season games.

Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn, who played for the Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox, once said: "An opener is not like any other game. There's that little extra excitement, a faster beating of the heart. You have that anxiety to get off to a good start, for yourself and for the team. You know that when you win the first one, you can't lose 'em all."

Opening Day extends throughout the sport of baseball, to hundreds of minor league baseball franchises as well as to college, high school, youth league fields and in areas far beyond North America. There are opening-night performances for new Broadway plays, and there is a beginning to everything, but Opening Day is uniquely the start of a baseball season. After a long, cold winter and a Spring Training to prepare, it is that time-honored opportunity to take one's seat at the ballpark and hear the umpire shout, "Play ball!"

Prior to Opening Day, the teams' managers have to decide the starting pitchers for the Opening Day game. This spot is usually given to the teams' ace pitchers, and is usually considered an honour for a pitcher to start on Opening Day. In turn, the pitchers who start on Opening Day are recognized throughout the baseball world as their teams' best starting pitchers.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, Opening Day

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