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Opening day! It’s opening day, opening day, opening day!

Yeah, I’m a bit fired up.

Let’s play two!

Ultrarunner wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 28, 2019 5:51 am

Opening day! It’s opening day, opening day, opening day!

Yeah, I’m a bit fired up.

Let’s play two!

Better yet, let's play 15!
WOO HOO!

Ah, Opening Day.
Other sports have 'first day of the season'.
Baseball has 'Opening Day'.

There is one player I would not want to be today....

My College coach did not know what to do with 'Fast Willie' Smith.
By far, the fastest kid on our team, Fast Willie was a dream to have on the bases.
His best trick was to take a huge, huge lead and then run as only Fast Willie could to second base. No matter if the pitcher threw to first or home.
And Fast Willie would almost always beat any throw.
The problem with Fast Willie was that he was not that great of a hitter.

Our Coach put him first in the lineup, then second, then sixth, until finally landing in the ninth spot.
My best friend on the team was 'Lumpy' Wilson.
Lumpy was our catcher and he was the prototypical 'Lumpy. Bowl legs, a paunch, big all over, and slow.
With two outs, Lumpy hit a ball in the gap that was cut off by the CF'er.
To our amazement, Lumpy tried to stretch the hit to a double.
He was out by 20 feet.
When getting back to the bench he threw himself beside me.
Coughing and exhaling seemingly more than inhaling, he started putting on his catchers gear.
I looked at him and he caught my look.
"Fuck you, Kenyon!"
'I didn't say a thing, Lumpy!"
"Yeah, but I know what you're thinking!" He said between deep breaths.
"Ok, why did you do that?" I asked with my right hand at the ready to block any punch.
"I'll tell you why. Do you see who is at the plate right now?" (It was Fast Willie)
"I would rather be thrown out by a mile than have Fast Willie pissed off that I'm on first base!"

I felt bad for Lumpy.
But today, upon seeing the KC lineup, I thought of Lumpy and Fast Willie.
Martin Maldonado is followed in the lineup by Billy Hamilton.
Hang wif' 'em, Martin!

Major League Baseball sure screws up a lot of things, but let's give it to them for Opening Day the way it is now. Fifteen games spread over one full day of action was FABULOUS yesterday with a record number of home runs and action for 12+ hours. What a day.

And if you ever get the chance to do it, STAY IN LAS VEGAS FOR OPENING DAY!!!!!!!

I can't stress this enough. Damn was yesterday fun. I mean the first games started at 10 am out here and it was just a steady stream of new games throughout the day. Then you had March Madness's Sweet Sixteen games starting at 4 pm and the action was everywhere. The sportsbooks were vibrant and fun, with bets being won and lost all around us. This had the feel -- God don't strike me down for saying this -- like the NFL's Week 1 Sunday. Seriously, I know that's hard to believe but it was that good.

It also helped that we all had a good parlay going throughout the day. I had 4 out of 4 in a 5-team parlay with only the Red Sox at Seattle to go, and Tom had a 5-team and a 6-team parlay in play with both needing Chris Sale to pitch a gem to win both of them. Tom was looking at $1,000 if Boston won and it sure was fun when they were up 2-0. Then Chris imploded and so did our parlays.

Oh well, it was a great, great day. Again, if you can ever swing it, come here and stay for Thursday's action. Wow, what fun.

In fact, I think that Wednesday Main Event will be very popular again next year. Leading into the Thursday games, yeah, I can see it filling fast.

It looks like MLB is keeping this same schedule for the next three years, and if so, the NFBC will keep this same schedule as well. Going Thursday-Wednesday with live drafts and auctions in Las Vegas turned out to be better than two weekends here, so expect a similar schedule in 2020.