Opening Day 2026

We pick up where we left off last November after what was in my opinion, one of the greatest baseball postseasons I've ever experienced, perhaps second only to the 2005 season when my favorite team won the World Series for the first and only time in my life.

If you've forgotten about last year's MLB playoffs, you can read about them here.

Or to save you from what was perhaps my longest post ever, (that's not even counting the epilog which had to be added to cover the World Series), you can cut to the chase. This is how I ended the epilog: 

Baseball is a strange game and that's probably why I love it so much.

For me, with nothing personally invested in either team, the chill rains of the end of baseball for the year will be quite tolerable. Watching, listening to and reading about this year's post season was like eating a magnificent meal and being completely satisfied, leaving no room for dessert. Or like reading a novel that you can't put down which at the end leaves you moved and inspired but also drained. These experiences don't come along every day, or even every year. Sometimes they are once in a generation or even once in a lifetime experiences.

Which is why we remember them.

Come to think of it, the 2025 MLB Playoffs may have been even more enjoyable to me as I didn't have much emotional investment in any of the teams last year, excluding the brief appearance of the Chicago Cubs; consequently the games were stress-free and I could tune in for one reason only, pure love of the game.

Here's a link to an article from this weekend's New York Times about a significant change coming to baseball this year, the introduction of reviews of ball and strike calls. This is how the article titled Introducing the Robot Umpire, written by Matthew Cullen begins: 

The foundations of baseball have largely remained the same since Babe Ruth swung a bat. Nine innings make a game. Three strikes and you’re out. And the ultimate authority on all pitches is the home plate umpire.

With all due respect to Mr. Cullen, those foundations he mentions go back farther than Babe Ruth's time, perhaps by sixty or seventy years. But he's absolutely right that baseball has been a game historically averse to change and when change does come, there are some who claim all is lost and vow to never watch another game. That said, they usually come back after a few weeks. 

To some, the introduction of reviews of balls and strikes using the Automated Ball and Strike Challenge System (A.B.S. for short) is a no-brainer. For several years now, many televised broadcasts of major league games have featured graphic superimpositions of the strike zone above home plate, and a spot marking where the ball crosses the plate, giving the viewer clear evidence of whether each pitch was a ball or a strike. *

One might argue that given this technology, the role of umpires calling balls and strikes is superfluous. And yet, home plate umpires will continue to call balls and strikes on top of all their other duties. This year the only change will be that players, namely the pitcher, catcher and batter, will have the opportunity to challenge a call they don't agree with, turning the call over to the A.B.S. Each team will be given two opportunities per game to make an overruled challenge, meaning that because there's a premium on them, games won't be bogged down by frivolous challenges. 

This seems like a reasonable compromise between the folks who want to keep the "human element" in the game, and those who insist that the only thing that matters is getting the call right. 

Personally, I'm in the human element camp as part of the aesthetics and drama of a ballgame is the reaction of and to the umpire calling a pitch. That would all go for naught if baseball goes the route of professional tennis which has for the most part eliminated human line judges in favor of automatic ones. 

For me, bad calls seem to even each other out, you win a few, you lose a few, just like in life. When thinking about issues regarding sports officials, I always think of someone I knew for whom the only possible outcome for his team was this: either they won the game, or the game was stolen from them by the refs. Life was hard enough for the poor guy; I can't imagine what it would have been like for him if he didn't have bad officiating to hang his hat on and be forced to admit that his team actually lost.

But I think there is one driving factor that is going to make the human element dinosaurs like me lose this battle forever. It's another recent change in baseball and other sports in this country, legalized online betting.

For that I turn your attention to this brilliant article in The Atlantic titled not entirely ironically: My year as a degenerate gambler, written by staff writer McKay Coppins. 

In 2018, the Supreme Court overturned a law passed by Congress which restricted most sports betting to the state of Nevada. Before that ruling according to the article:

...professional sports leagues remained determined to keep gambling at a distance. High-profile scandals—the White Sox World Series fix in 1919, the Mafia-instigated point-shaving scheme at Boston College in 1978—had convinced commissioners that betting posed an existential threat to organized sports.

Coppins goes on to quote Paul Tagliabue, the late commissioner of the NFL who testifying before Congress said this: 

Nothing has done more to despoil the games Americans play and watch than widespread gambling on them.

After the 2018 Supreme Court ruling however, the leagues took a 180-degree pivot and made up for lost time as fast as their legs could carry them. 

In his article. McKay Collins uses a wonderful literary metaphor (no, not Shakespeare) to suggest why the highest court of the land in their infinite wisdom, may have not made the right decision. You'll have to read the article to find out why. 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that legalized betting is a boon for the sports business. Much as they'd like to depend on the love of the game folks like my son and me, there just aren't enough of us around to turn much of a profit. Sure, fans will always tune in to their favorite teams' games, but how many folks would spend their valuable free time watching a meaningless late-season game between two teams they have no particular interest in? 

But if they have a wager on that game, well that's another story. 

Which is where the demand to get the calls absolutely right comes in. Back in the good ol' days when sports leagues distanced themselves from gambling, they could go on as they always had, letting human beings imperfect as they are, make the calls, then shrug their shoulders claiming that bad calls are simply a part of the game. But now that the leagues and the sports gambling companies are virtually tied at the hip, ** any bad call, even the ones that have little or no impact on the outcome of a game, will send a red flag to bettors that the games may not be completely on the up and up. 

As McKay Collins points out in his article, betting has been around as long as competitive sports. And as I've pointed out a number of times in this space, betting is the reason that spectator sports such as baseball exist in the first place, If not taken to problematic extremes, sports betting can be a fun social activity and bonding experience, just ask the tens of millions of Americans who at this moment have their own bracket or ten entered in the office NCAA Basketball Tournament pool. 

Baseball is a game that lends itself perfectly to betting, perhaps more than any other with the possible exception of American football. Since a baseball game can be broken down by each pitch, betting lines can be set up for any number of occurrences, most of which have nothing to do with the outcome of the game.   

That makes me think of my greatest moment of clairvoyance at a baseball game. I was sitting in the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field one sunny weekday afternoon when the Cubs' late Hall of Fame second baseman Ryne Sandburg was up to bat. With runners on base and a three ball and no strike count on him, I made the comment to my friends, presumably heard by several other folks within earshot: "Do you think he's going to swing at the next pitch?" 

General baseball logic says that batters shouldn't swing at a 3-0 pitch. But I assumed Sandburg would, given that a pitcher not wanting to walk the batter, will often deliver a nice fat pitch up the middle that a great hitter like Sandburg could take advantage of. Which naturally he did, launching a drive that landed in the seats not far from where we were sitting. I looked like a genius, if only I had put money on that claim. 

I bring it up because that moment is stuck in my memory, unlike all the other times I made similar comments only to have the batter take that 3-0 pitch for ball four. Those memories are long lost within the recesses of my brain. If I had placed bets all those times, I'd be deep in the hole.

Which is precisely why I don't bet on sports, I have far too many other methods to part with my money thank you very much.

Needless to say, I'm perfectly happy enjoying stress-free experiences at the old ballpark which I hope to do at least a few times this season with my kids God willing. And yes, I'll be keeping score.

Which means the only thing I'll have to worry about is a team sending more than nine batters up to the plate in a single inning, thereby messing up my tidy scorecard. 

I can't wait.

Play ball!

* Of course, no system is perfect, but it's safe to say that the A.B.S. is more accurate in calling balls and strikes than umpires. For me the best part is when the automated system proves the umpires right.

** If you don't believe that the sports leagues and the betting companies are tied-at-the-hip, next time you watch a game on TV, note the number of times you'll see an ad for an on-line betting site.