Ah, Opening Day with its clean laundry smell, its pomp and unfurling flags and unblemished stat sheets and fresh cut grass and fresh faces. The excitement, the promise of unwrapping a new season. All of it Easter egg sweet and redolent of a pastel rebirth. A baseball mirage—but it never lasts.
The Paradiso of Spring Training complexes, of concrete and clearly laid-out paths to improvement, of Scottsdale! culminate in that initial triumphant “Play Ball!” But after the first pitch is thrown, it doesn’t take long for the sobering realities of the game to remind fans and players alike how the cookie actually crumbles.