SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 2017
This Sunday in America…at the Church of The Compassionate Conservative, Beloved Whistleblower Publisher, the Right-Wing Reverend Charles Foster Kane was asking his Political Parishioners to Pray for Pastimes, since MONDAY is supposed to be “Opening Day” in Cincinnati, which it really isn’t, since after nearly 50 days of spring training and a long winter respite, Major League Baseball’s 2017 regular season has finally arrived, with Opening Day Arriving Sunday with three other games.
The 2017 season will officially begins shortly after 1 p.m. ET this afternoon on ESPN when Tampa Bay Rays starter Chris Archer delivers the first pitch to the New York Yankees. The Yankees will start their ace, Masahiro Tanaka, and should things go well, could deploy the highest-paid relief pitcher in major league history — Former Cincinnati Red Aroldis Chapman, who re-joined the club by signing a record five-year, $86 million contract.
The National League will take it from there, as the San Francisco Giants and lefty ace Madison Bumgarner open at the Arizona Diamondbacks, who will start right-hander Zack Greinke, on ESPN2 around 4 p.m. ET. Finally, at 8:30 ET, the defending World Series champion Chicago Cubs — yep, it still happened — open against their NL Central rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, at Busch Stadium on ESPN.
So much for Cincinnati’s eternal honor of always getting to host “Baseball’s Opening Game” every year, just because the first fully professional baseball team was the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings (ten men on salary for eight months from March 15 to November 15).
Whistleblower Senior Spoiled Sports Editor Andy FurBall says the Cincinnati Red Stockings won their first game on May 4, 1869 by a score of 45-9. They then went on to go 57-1 (wins-tie), touring the U.S. playing teams from Boston to San Francisco, something that had not been done before.
FurBall predicts the 2017 Reds’ record probably won’t be nearly so good.
FurBall also says the next year, they won another 24 straight games before finally losing 8-7 in 11 innings against the Brooklyn Atlantics on June 14. After their first loss, attendance declined substantially and they were disbanded the following year despite only losing six games all season. Reds Sportscaster Marty Brennaman remembers it well.
Other 2017 Opening Day Stories in The Blower
Saturday’s “Patronage County Today” E-dition (“Opening Day Jitters’)
