MLB Opening Day: Dare To Dream

For a day, nothing else matters.  For baseball purists, everything else is put aside and worries about economy and anything else fades away for a fan who dares to dream.

This could be the year.

Between Sunday night, yesterday, and today, thousands of faithful followers pack into a car and head to a place where fantasy can become reality.  A place where a father can bond with his son.  A place where you revisit memories gone by.  A place that, if everything lines up just right, can seem magical.

Opening Day.

It even has a unique smell.  The smell of a good barbecue as you tailgate in the parking lot.  The smell of freshly cut grass as you enter the stadium.  Thousands of strangers who can strike up a conversation as long-lost best friends because they are wearing the same shirt.

You don't have to see through the eyes of a child going to his or her first game to relive the experience. 

There just isn't much like it.  It doesn't matter what happened last year.  Or the year before that.  Or the year before that.  It's a clean slate, a fresh start, a time when it seems anything is possible.  Even the president of our great nation, carrying on a 100-year-old tradition, threw out the first pitch to the Washington Nationals' opener.  He sported a Nationals jacket.

And a Chicago White Sox cap.

Opening day brings its own unique excitement to America's pastime.  It's the same game, the same 27 outs, the same 162-game season.  But for one day, everything can seem good.

Opening Day.

Dare to dream.