Audio courtesy of KTAR 620
Just some words from our fearless manager, Bob Melvin, to send us into battle. As the Gameday Thread posted this morning is already rampaging its way to 300 or more pre-game comments, still with the best part of an hour to go, figured we should open one up for first pitch, to save us from having to do so in the middle of the second inning! Seems everyone is very excited, which is just the way it should be: a vista of infinite possibilities is present on Opening Day. Maybe we'll win 162 games, maybe we'll lose them. Here's soco's comment on the previous thread, which really deserves a more prominent position:
The year resets, anything could happen. Maybe we’ll be seeing the playoffs again this year, maybe it’ll end with a championship parade. Maybe it’ll be over before the All-Star Break, or maybe it’ll be a heartbreaking loss at the end of the season that’ll end the dream. Maybe some of our players will be considered for post season awards, or maybe they’ll all be ignored. It’s the end we care about, but it’s not that end that writes the story.
There will be a thousand moments this season that will make it memorable. A thousand scenes, sights, smells, that will remind all of us 2009 many years from now, the little things that we’ll value long after the joys of winning and the ache of losing fades away for another optimistic summer.
The anticipation is almost over, that aching hunger that starts in November and grows with each passing, cold day. It’s a hunger that satiated with hot dogs or beers, with a green, green grass, with the crack of a bat and the wordless roar of a crowd. It’s a hunger that is passed generation to generation, through the mouths of elders to the ears of babes, about Babes and Gibsons, and Randys, about one summer long, long ago deep in Harlem or Flatbush or hot, hot St. Louis, or the South Side of Chicago, or tucked deep in Chavez Ravine, the backyard towns where the greats first walk to the Metropolises they acheive and eventually leave.
But that memory doesn’t leave. It lives on during every Opening Day and every summer day and night. It lives on long after the giants fall and the forgotten memorists die, their legacy passed on Opening Day. So, welcome back, Opening Day.
And with that, here's the first pitch!