Opening Day: Patience is a Virtue

What does Opening Day mean to you? For me, it can be a source of energy. It is one morning that I typically have had no problem waking up, excited for the day. In years past, I would take the afternoon off, set up two TVs side-by-side and watch anywhere from two to four games at a time throughout the afternoon.

Spring Training is done. A long offseason is over. All our thoughts and opinions on what our favorite team will now become a reality. Hope reigns eternal.

As Twins fans, it is especially difficult. The team won 101 games in 2019, and made some big moves in the offseason. It is entirely possible that the 2020 Twins roster is even better.

The 2020 Twins season was to start in Oakland later this afternoon. While we all fully understand the gravity of the situation of the global pandemic, it is OK to still be disappointed that we don’t get Opening Day games today. The teams. The players. The fans. We all would much prefer to have baseball games today and know that there would be baseball for the next seven months.

There are many things that Opening Day means to people. Living in northern Minnesota, there is - of course - still snow on the ground. But Opening Day means that there soon will not be snow on the ground, that the long winter is coming to an end shortly.

There is a normalcy. As Nick wrote recently, baseball provides a sense of routine to a fan’s life. It is just something that you know will be there 162 times over six months, and hopefully seven months for your favorite team.

There are the emerging story lines that we would now have answers to. Today, we would know who won the fifth starter job? Would the Twins go with 13 pitchers, or just 12 pitchers to start the season? We would all much rather be wondering right now if we would see Byron Buxton’s name in the lineup today. Who was named the 26th man?

Most of even the most die hard baseball fans can certainly put those questions into proper perspective.

Social Distancing has become a term we all have learned and now use in daily conversation. Shelter from home. Schools closing and parents, teachers and students trying to figure out what that means for them. Nearly 3.3 million jobless claims filed in the last week.

Baseball feels so unimportant right now. And obviously, right now, it isn’t important.

But at some point in the future - maybe in a month, maybe in July - there will be baseball again. We will get Opening Day. We don’t have any real idea of what that will look like yet.

Frankly, I might argue that it is great to read news that MLB is having conversations about trying to still play a large number of games, though probably not 162, even if that means baseball in December. There may be a time when games are played with no fans in the stands. Baseball has a lot of very difficult discussions going on and coming in the near future.

But the fact that there are planning meetings for a 2020 MLB season does provide hope. Hope that we will again see baseball this year, and hope that means that this global pandemic has been somewhat restrained.

So we all do our parts. We wash our hands often. We cough and sneeze into our sleeves. We stay at home. We do those things to protect ourselves, and our family and loved ones, for our community, our state, our country and our world.

And on the periphery of all that, we do it so that we will be able to see baseball on our TVs, hear baseball on our radios, and eventually congregate at stadiums like Target Field, or even our local community ball fields.

And in the meantime, stop by Twins Daily. We are a community, here for each other. We can provide a place to keep talking baseball, and talking about our favorite team, even debate with other fans, in large part because we need it. We need the distraction. We need baseball. We need hope. And we need patience.

There will be an Opening Day. We just need to wait a little bit. But, patience is a virtue, they say.