2025 MLB Opening Day Is Here

Either You're Excited, Or Your Baseball Friends Are Excited For You

I try to shy away from recency bias, but over the past couple of years, it does feel like the average Joe or Jane is talking about baseball more than ever. ESPN’s First Take is going to be about football and basketball coverage for the foreseeable future, but I don’t know if because I’m tapped into more baseball content creators or more people are watching, but I’ve seen more members of the populace hype about this week. What’s this week you ask? It’s Opening Day, baybay!

It’s the time when every team plays a series. And on Thursday, March 27th, twenty-eight of thirty teams played. This means anyone who’s at least a casual fan of the game has put their ballcaps on and shared their favorite team-centric memes. I don’t like to wax poetic about baseball being “America’s Pastime,” (it’s the NFL and really, as Americans, we don’t do anything united these days anyway) but it does give off a little feeling of everyone being on the same page, albeit for a little while. What’s great is that there are a bunch of stories you could pull from the absolute madness that’s occurring this weekend.

Take for instance Baltimore Orioles player Tyler O’Neil, who has hit a home run in his last SIX opening days. Six. In a ROW:

Or what about the Chicago White Sox? A team so bad they have the record for the most losses in a regular season that they set JUST last year. The team was SO bad, most Chicagoans thought the team was CURSED. Like, legit cursed. An old ball from the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal was discovered in Tribune Tower in 2022. And while the team wanted to keep it, the 2024 White Sox were so horrible, the team decided to put the ball BACK:

The 1919 Black Sox scandal was an interesting story if you’ve never heard it before. The Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series that year for cash from a gambling syndicate. It’s where we get the phrase “Say it Ain’t So, Joe.” As legend goes a dismayed child had asked White Sox player Shoeless Joe Jackson to set the record straight.

Where was I? What about the Los Angeles Dodgers? A team that has quickly become the Evil Empire. They technically already had their Opening Day in Japan the week before in a two-game series against the Cubs, which they won 2 games to zip.

Los Angeles made $40 million dollars in merch sales ALONE from that trip. Shohei Ohtani, Japan’s native son, is a living legend in the Land of the Rising Sun, but you already knew that.

Or how about Juan Soto? The $765 Million Dollar Man (and private suite and four front seats for his family man, as well) had his much anticipated regular season debut with the Mets on the road in Houston against the Astros. The results? Well, he reached base three times (that’s good!) but he was also the final strikeout in a game the Mets lost, (that’s not so good!). While the Mets can say that having a free agent of their caliber sign with them a good omen, there’s going to be people out there who are going to remind us of the fact Soto is earning $315,000 PER GAME every time he fails.

But what if you’re a small team that doesn’t have a huge free agent or plays across the pond in Asia? Well, Opening Day week came with it a deluge of “comedic” and hype videos from smaller franchises who have that “don’t forget about me” energy. Here’s something the Rockies did:

Um, yeah. There’s a reason why the word comedic was in quotes in the last paragraph. Oh, did I tell you that there’s not one but TWO major league baseball teams playing in minor league ballparks? The Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays, who since having their home stadium damaged by Hurricane Milton are playing in a park that is normally a Yankees spring training facility:

And you really can’t mention opening day without mentioning the Cincinnati Reds, which throw an actual PARADE for their entry.

The point I’m trying to make is that while it’s very easy to get swept up with the many MLB franchises vying for your attention, for one weekend a year it’s a Baseball Carnival. Unlike the playoffs at the end of the season, every team has a chance and every team reminds their fans of that fact. And that’s pretty cool. I guess baseball IS very American in that way. Idealistic, but when reality strikes we just go ahead and pretend that optimism never existed.

“Work hard” and play ball. I can dig that.