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Opening Day is the day on which professional baseball leagues begin their regular season. For Major League Baseball and most of the minor leagues, this day typically falls during the first week of April. For baseball fans, Opening Day serves as a symbol of rebirth; writer Thomas Boswell once penned a book titled, ''Why Time Begins on Opening Day''. Many feel that the occasion represents a newness or a chance to forget last season, in that all 30 of the major league clubs and their millions of fans begin with 0–0 records.〔 Opening Day festivities extend throughout the sport of baseball, to hundreds of Minor League Baseball franchises as well as to college, high school, youth league fields and in areas far beyond North America. Since Major League Baseball generally starts their season first among professional leagues, their Opening Day is the one most commonly recognized by the general public. Most of the minor leagues start a few days later, but within the same week; the short season Class A and Rookie leagues are exceptions, since they begin play in June. (College, high school and youth baseball seasons vary widely depending on location and weather conditions.) Opening Day ignores the exhibition games played during spring training in the month leading up to Opening Day. ==History== For generations, Opening Day has arrived amid pageantry. In Cincinnati, Ohio, home of the sport's first professional team, the annual Findlay Market Parade marks an official "city holiday" with young and old alike taking the day off to cheer on the Reds. For decades, the first pitch of every major league season officially took place in Cincinnati, and the Reds remain the only major league team to always open the season with a home game (save for 1966, when they started the season at Chicago after rain washed out the opening series in Cincinnati, and 1990, when due to a lockout affecting the schedule they opened the season at Houston).〔http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/C2/20100318/LIFE/3180316/Reds-broadcaster-recalls-Opening-Day-memories〕 The Chicago Cubs have been the Reds' most common Opening Day opponent, visiting Cincinnati 36 times on Opening Day, most recently in 2007. The Pittsburgh Pirates, whom the current Reds organization played their first Opening Day against in 1882, is a close second with 31, most recently in 2015; no other team has more than 19 (by the St. Louis Cardinals, most recently in 2014), largely due to the Cubs and Pirates rotating as the Opening Day opponents from 1899 to 1916, then the two teams and the Cardinals rotated from 1917 to 1952.〔(Cincinnati Reds Opening Day History ) ''Baseball Almanac''〕 Fittingly, the Reds were also the first team to host an Interleague game on Opening Day when the team hosted the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the first year of year-round Interleague play in 2013.〔(Choo does his part, but bats stifled as Reds fall in 13 ) MLB.com (04/01/2013)〕 Since 1994 ESPN has televised a regular-season game the night before "Opening Day", and recent years have seen the staging of season-opening series in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Japan, and Australia. While these are technically "opening games", Major League Baseball still reserves the title "Opening Day" for the first day in which multiple games are played. Opening Day is a state of mind as well, with countless baseball fans known to recognize this unofficial holiday as a good reason to call in sick at work or be truant from school (as most teams typically play their home opener in the afternoon) and go out to the ballpark for the first of 162 regular season games. Teams' home openers serve as the only regular season games during the year in which the entire rosters of both teams as well as coaches and clubhouse staff are introduced to the crowd prior to the games; for the rest of the year, ballparks only introduce the starting lineups (including the designated hitter in American League ballparks) and the team's manager. Some teams, among them the New York Mets, have had their broadcasters as the master of pre-game ceremonies for their home openers, which also typically feature appearances by retired players, local celebrities or media personalities, politicians, and other dignitaries. Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn, who played for the Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox, once said: "An opener is not like any other game. There's that little extra excitement, a faster beating of the heart. You have that anxiety to get off to a good start, for yourself and for the team. You know that when you win the first one, you can't lose 'em all."〔 Prior to Opening Day, the teams' managers have to decide the starting pitchers for the game, an assignment typically given to the ace of each team's staff. For a pitcher to start on Opening Day is considered an honor. In 2014, Ozzie Smith, with the support of Anheuser-Busch, began a campaign using the ''We the People'' site on WhiteHouse.gov to petition the U.S. government to make Opening Day an official national holiday. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Opening Day」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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