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A season of The Rivalry and a new arms race: Rarely has the pre-season script promised better baseball stories. (Mark Sappenfield, 4/05/04, CS Monitor)

For most of the major leagues, Monday is the best of baseball days. It is Opening Day - that annual moment of perfect potential, when the game's unwritten script holds promise for every fan, no matter how long-suffering. And rarely has the script promised better stories.

This is the year that the Chicago Cubs could end more than 90 seasons of futility. It is the year that baseball's longtime have-nots could show some muscle. And it is the year that America's greatest sports rivalry could escalate to levels of acrimony not seen since Hannibal marched over the Alps to sack Rome. [...]

Moreover, there is the simple fact that baseball is baseball, and Opening Day remains a shared national ritual of ballpark franks and head-first slides unfolding the slower rhythms of summer and days past. It is the president throwing out the first pitch - as he will do in St. Louis Monday - and a sense of connection to history that acts as a salve, particularly in a time of government hearings and overseas atrocities.

"In the minds of many - fans, politicians, and those who look at baseball - there still is something special about this game," says John Odell of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Right from that opening pitch, the fabric of this season will be knit from the loose threads of last October.

You had to love that as soon as Pedro got in trouble last night he started throwing at guys--just warning them not to settle in...

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 5, 2004 8:56 AM