Play Ball!

Do you know why today was a great day? Because it's one of the happiest days of the year on my calendar. See if you can guess which one (this is a real toughie...):

1. Christmas Eve
2. Baseball Opening Day
3. Christmas Day

To say that Opening Day is always more fun than Christmas would be a bit of a stretch; after all, it's hard to beat a day that begins with presents and ends with roast beef. However, when - like today - your favorite team opens up the season with a win over their arch-rival that is nothing short of brilliant, it makes for a great day. Sportscasters across the nation have been bludgeoning us all over the heads today with the old cliché that the return of baseball heralds the onset of Summer and that it's an opportunity for even the most pessimistic among us to become optimists for a brief while. I won't deny that those are true, but for me it's much simpler than that: for whatever reason, I like baseball, and life just seems more fun when it's going on. Of course, a good season on the part of the Mariners never hurts (speaking of irrational optimism...).