South Bronx, NY: Today the Yankees officially begin their 2022 baseball season and there in no better way to bring additional excitement to an opening day at Yankee stadium than to play against their archrivals the Boston Red Sox.
Yankee – Red Sox is like water and oil; they just don’t mix. This goes back a long way since 1919 when the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees and the Red Sox not winning a world Series for over eight decades since. This was also known, as the Curse of the Bambino. So having an opening day game between these two teams is an exciting day for fans from both teams, both cities and for all of baseball.
This is the magic of baseball. Yes, we have many sports, NFL, NBA, and MLS, but none of them have the magic that the baseball season brings to baseball fans. Baseball is not a one, or two games per week event like other sports. Baseball allows a longer stay and a longer season where the team, the players and staff almost become part of the community, and the city they represent. Baseball also allows for people to forget problems, forget issues by just watching a competition between men playing like children, with a bat, ball, and a glove. Yet those three simple items can bring out a fierce competition that can excite an entire stadium.
As a community resident I have always had my pros and con’s regarding opening day. It always brought more cars to a community that has one of the highest asthma rates in the country. It brought ridiculous traffic that caused many of the resident’s nightmares. It sometimes displayed the biggest contradiction of the beautiful pomp and circumstances and glory of an opening day game, but after the party, I would walk home and see the poverty that confronts us every day as the stadium is in the poorest urban congressional district in the country.
I’m glad that many of those contradictions have been relieved, though the poverty issue remains. Less cars are coming to our community since the new stadium was built and that brought several changes including a Metro North train stop so that many fans could come by train instead of driving their cars. We still have many issues to resolve. However, on opening day everyone is just concentrated on one thing, BASEBALL. And this is good for the fans, the community, the merchants, and the individual hustlers selling everything from knock off t-shirts, to art while others provide entertainment playing an instrument, or singing for any donations.
Baseball is back and after going through the most oppressive Covid period that any of us had ever experienced it could not have come at a better time.
