𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘀 𝗠𝘆 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗿t 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗜 𝗕𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝘆𝘄𝗮𝘆)

I don’t know when I fell in love with the idea of baseball. This is bothersome, because I like to know exactly when things begin so I can blame them properly later.

What drew me to it?

Maybe it was that unnaturally beautiful moment in “The Natural” when the beautiful Robert Redford sends the ball screaming into the stadium lights, smashing them, and then takes his victory lap in a shower of golden sparks. When I watch that scene I think, yes, I would like all my victories, no matter how small, to involve sparks.

Or perhaps it was that afternoon in the Spring of 1989 at the iconic Cine Capri in Phoenix. A new immigrant, I was still high on an optimism that I’m sad to say feels a bit naive today. It was also my first time at the American movies, and I bought a ticket to “Field of Dreams” because the title sounded hopeful, which is often how these things begin. I didn’t even realize it was going to be about baseball, which now seems like missing a fairly large point.

Afterwards, I did what I do when something gets under my skin. I went out looking for some more of it. At the old downtown library, I checked out the novel on which the movie was based – W.P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe.” I’ve since read it enough times that I can’t really tell whether I love the story or just the feeling of believing it.

Most likely, though, I love baseball because it is built on the completely unreasonable idea that anything can happen. The kind of anything where you are absolutely certain of one outcome and then, suddenly, you are dead wrong. “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” This morning feels less like a line from Yogi Berra and more like a little life raft.

Because yesterday (Opening Day, no less) was also the day the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Ireland national football teams lost their bids to advance to the World Cup, and I am, in a completely disproportionate and deeply personal way, devastated.

This is the problem I think with loving sports. They don’t care about your emotional schedule. They don’t consult you before breaking your heart. One minute you’re imagining glory, queen of the world, and the next you’re staring at your phone like it personally betrayed you.

And this is where baseball comes back

in, the way it always does.

Baseball says come back tomorrow.

Baseball says there are 162 games. You can afford to be wrong today.

Baseball says the story is never as finished as it looks.

Baseball feels a bit like America, at least the version of it I first encountered, in 1989 and maybe the version of it we’re grappling with in 2026. Messy, inconsistent, occasionally heartbreaking, and yet aspirational, built on an almost delusional belief that things can turn around. That the game isn’t over. That it can’t be.

Every year, as a new season gets underway, Kinsella’s words come back to me:

Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open.

Perhaps an extravagant way of describing a game played in the dirt, but he’s not wrong. And it’s exactly what I need to hear when everything feels, briefly, finished.

Anything is possible.

Play ball.

Go Red Sox.