It would be interesting to count up how many gallons of ink were used over the past two weeks so writers could wax poetic about the beauty and majesty of baseball's opening day.
There are few sports that lend themselves to that kind of effusive, hyper-emotional praise quite like baseball. It's the sport tied to the soul of America, the one connected to everyone's childhood, the one that heals parent-child relationships with games of catch. You know the story lines.
And there are few events that bring that kind of emotion out in writers quite like opening day. It's the perfectly even start, the time when every team is a contender. Opening day is built around the limitless potential that comes from a mix of purity and endless optimism; the unblemished fields and spotless uniforms.
It's also about unblemished teams and spotless players.
In an era when almost every memorable moment or inspiring story of the past 15 years has been tainted by performance enhancing drugs or a plethora of disenchanting elements, opening day represents the game at its most idealistic.
Maybe that's why those poetic descriptions of baseball seem to dissipate in the week following opening day. Baseball takes the perfect potential of the new season and ruins it by having to go and play the games.
Right around now is when our optimism turns to cynicism, when your team turns from a squad of heroes to busts, or overpaid prima donnas, when potential inevitably becomes disappointment.
And that disappointment turns fans away. More than 40,000 fans showed up for the Cleveland Indians' home opener, but by the next night, attendance was down to 9,853. Clearly, the shine of baseball—the reason everyone writes with such genuine emotion about the start of the season—wore off pretty quickly.
The same can be said for every other team in the majors; every stadium experiences a drop off after opening day. It's only logical, opening day is a promotion that has the novelty other games lack, but after the first homestand it seems like baseball becomes something to be tolerated. Once the first few games are out of the way and reality sets in, baseball becomes the sports world's wallpaper until October.
Part of the mystique of baseball, however, is not just the potential of opening day but the reality of spending countless summer afternoons wasting away in bleachers. July day games are just as connected to that collective American sports psyche and contribute just as much to baseball memories as opening day does.
So the true test of a baseball fan is not if they show up on opening day and talk the big game about the joy of starting another season. It's if they keep that enthusiasm up for the other 161 games of the year, and buy in to that dimension of endless summers at the ballpark, as corny as it sounds.
Sure, it's easy to go to opening day, but it's a lot harder to sit through 40-degree April night games that border on meaningless and 100-degree August ones with scarcely more significance.
I'm not one of those fans. I used to be, and there's a part of me that wishes I still was. But there is no indication those times are coming back any time soon.
And there aren't many of those fans left. Baseball needs that optimism, that eternal hope from opening day, to continue for the entire summer and carry it into the fall. When you get down to it, baseball needs believers.
So if you happily confessed to believing all in The Magic of Baseball last week, I hope you've kept it up since then and will for the whole summer.
As much as cynics like me rebel against the sappy, poetic prose that sometimes infects baseball writing for opening day, it's exactly what the sport can offer that other sports can't. The question is if it will continue for the next few months—if people keep that baseball love up for dozens of games or if it peters out after a weekend.
Opening day was great. It reminded us why we love baseball and why the hope of a new season will live on forever. But what comes next can be just as beautiful, and is even more important.
Has baseball already lost its magic a few games into the season? E-mail Nico at savidgewilki@dailycardinal.com.
