Opening Day

All across this country, many Americans are waking up with the promise that the 2011 baseball season will begin tomorrow. Many fathers will throw the ball around with their son, and afterwords wrap their gloves up in a big rubber band in preparation for their favorite team's home opener. Others will tell stories of their favorite teams greatest triumphs, or perhaps their greatest let downs.

Opening day means a lot of different traditions for a lot of different people. One thing it represents to fans everywhere is a fresh start. The beginning of a new season represents the chance for their team to win a pennant, and for fans to feel like champions for lending their support.

Ask any die hard baseball fan out there what his or her favorite memory is concerning the game, and many will respond with the answer of the first game their parents ever took them to. They will be able to describe the account with some of the most particular details that only a true fan could remember. Whether is be how green the grass was, where they were sitting, what player may have hit the first home-run they had ever seen, or any other countless memories.

                                         Image: www.csmonitor.com

There are no real words which can describe the feeling of opening day, the best to do it in my opinion is Don Angel in his poem entitled Opening Day. Within the poem he describes his anticipation for his team's season to start and the drama that ensues with his team coming out on top and resolves by stating that because of the victory he will go to another game that season.

Like Angel, I also get excited for opening day; I look forward to the promise that my hometown team, the Houston Astros could make a run for the championship. One thing is for sure though, opening day will bring excitement and energy to ballparks around the country and to me, signifies the true first day of spring.

Below are some highlights from this years opening day.

                                        Video: www.youtube.com

JUICED

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemons,  and Alex Rodriguez all have one thing in common...not that they are all prospective Hall of Fame-rs, but that they have all tested positive for steroids. 

In recent years, Major League Baseball has suffered through widespread use of steroids among its players. Some of baseball's most cherished story lines of the past decade have been tainted by performance-enhancing drugs, including the accomplishments of record-setting home run hitters and dominating pitchers.

Fay Vincent, baseball's commissioner from 1989 to 1992, tried to crack down on steroids in his last year in the job. In June 1991, he sent every major league club a memo saying all illegal drug use was "strictly prohibited" by law, "cannot be condoned or tolerated" and could result in discipline or expulsion.

The next year, Bud Selig became commissioner and through the 1990s, Selig and the players union acted as if steroids were not a big deal. "If baseball has a problem, I must say candidly that we were not aware of it," Selig said in 1995.

Baseball first tested for steroids in 2003. If more than 5 percent of players failed the tests, penalties would be imposed starting in 2004, which is what subsequently happened. Roughly 100 players tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. The penalty for a first offense was treatment, and for five violations, a one-year suspension.

The results from that season were supposed to remain anonymous. But for reasons that have never been made clear, the results were never destroyed and they have come to be known among fans and people in baseball as "the list." Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Jason Grimsley and David Segui are just a few of the superstars.

In late 2005, baseball toughened its penalties, and by early 2006 appointed George Mitchell (the Mitchell report) to conduct an investigation of the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport.

Through the 2007 season, that inquiry loomed over what should have been one of the great moments of baseball history: Barry Bonds's overcoming Hank Aaron's all-time home run record. In 2007, Bonds was indicted on federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges related to his  testimony in a steroids case and now is awaiting trial.

                                                                         Image From: Google

With all of the attention that steroids has gotten over the last decade and more recently with the Bonds trial coming up, one can't help but wonder what the big deal is. Steroids have become a part of baseball whether we like it or not as fans, but how can fans really be mad when our sports heroes are doing exactly what we want them to do?

Because of steroids, players pitch faster, and hit the ball harder which makes the game more exciting, not to mention it gives them the competitive edge to win. The fact that steroids are not even more rampant is simply because of the harsh penalties that are handed out now. Besides, since when are we as a people opposed to enhancing our bodies; you can't turn on a TV without seeing an ad for better sexual performance, creams that make skin look better, hair loss solutions, etc.

If we as Americans are allowed to take a pharmaceutical aid, why shouldn't professional baseball players?

He was safe! Or was he?

Thinking back to last season, there is only one play that still stands out among baseball fans across America as controversial. The final play of the Tigers, Indians match up on June 2 leaving Armando Galarraga with an almost perfect game, keeping him out of the record books.

The botched call on what would have been the 27th out of the game offers the strongest possible evidence for proponents of expanding the role of instant replay in baseball. Is there anyone who wouldn't have wanted to see Galaragga make his mark on history, and make that season which in the first two months had already featured two perfect games and a no-hitter that much more special?

Video: www.mlb.com

What's more, Jim Joyce, who has been a distinguished umpire for Major League Baseball since 1986 will always be remembered for this one blown call. After watching the post-game agony on Joyce's face, why deny the next erring umpire the chance to watch the play over on a monitor and make the whole thing right?

This is not the first time a lack of technology has potentially changed the course of history, in the ninth inning of game six of the 1985 World Series, first-base umpire, Don Denkinger, called Jorge Orta of the Kansas City Royals safe at first base. Replays later showed that St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, Todd Worrell had touched the bag, before Orta got there. This play inevitably sent the Cardinals into a downward spiral in which they lost the series in game seven.

All of this considered, there is a reason that the only real comparable mistake was Don Denkinger's missed call from back in 1985 -- blown calls of this proportion are few and far between. The proposed system of replay would feature something of a football style format where managers would get one to two challenges per game. Not only would this affect every game throughout the regular season but it would lead to overturning minor bad calls, which quite frankly make the game more entertaining. It doesn't seem worth it to change an entire system for the chance of a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Sure, not having replay took away Galaragga's perfect game and probably should have been corrected by Major League Baseball but the thing about our national past time is that baseball is filled with a history of bad calls. They are a part of the triumphs and shortfalls that parents tell their kids about; no one will ever tell a story about how their favorite player got a botched call overturned to win a perfect game.

The issue of replay is something that will be discussed around baseball for years to come, but the fact remains...sometimes the best part of going to a baseball game is yelling an expletive out two at the top of your lungs at an umpire and talking about it with fellow fans for days to come.