One of the best days of the year coming up to bat

One of the best days of the year is about to happen on Thursday.

Opening Day unfolds in all its glory at Globe Life Park in Arlington.

It’s the day that the legendary Hall of Fame player and manager Rogers Hornsby described, "People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

There aren’t any other Opening Day events like this in life. Just this one. But, it comes around annually and brings with it all the pageantry and celebration that transcends any other day in all of sports.

Walt Whitman observed at the game’s origins, "I see great things in baseball. It’s our game — the American Game."

It will debut with much celebration of our nation. Our flag will unfold, the National Anthem will be sung, all the players will be standing, and the U. S. Air Force will conduct a fly over that thrills us with the unmistakable sound of freedom.

Soon after that a microphone will be placed in front of a youngster who will deliver the long-anticipated words, Play Ball!

Then the leadoff hitter for the world champion Houston Astros will step to the plate and await the first pitch from the Texas Rangers starting ace. Game one will be underway.

There will be a game like this in all 30 of the cities that are privileged to host one of the few things in life that is purely American made.

Then comes 161 more games but only the first of them all will be like this one. It delivers on the promise of carrying on the tradition of playing the hardest of all sports and the one that nearly all of us have tried at one time or another in our lives.

But only a few have mastered it to the extent necessary to become known as great major league players. And, even those guys fail 70 percent of the time to successfully hit that round white ball with its 108 red stitches with a round stick of wood.

Pete Rose holds the record for safely hitting the ball the most times explains how to do it, “It’s a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square.”

Arlington’s embrace of the Great Game has become legendary. More than five decades ago it began with young Mayor Tom Vandergriff’s resolve not to give up on his dream of bringing a major league team to town.

Voters twice approved measures to build and then expand old Arlington Stadium in order to meet the league’s requirements for approval and finally see a team uprooted from the nation’s capital to become the Texas Rangers.

Then came the need for a new ballpark in 1990 when Arlington’s status as a major league city was at stake. In the largest ever turnout of voters for a local election, the people said yes by a 30-point margin to meet the challenge.

All of that was to be replayed almost 25 years later, when they again said yes to a new ballpark, this one with a roof, with a 20-point victory ensuring a long future of more Opening Day celebrations for us to share.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Mary Schmich, "Opening Day. All you have to do is say the words and you feel the shutters thrown wide, the room air out, the light pour in. In baseball, no other day is so pure with possibility."

Maybe the best of it all is summed up by the Star-Telegram reporter Jeff Wilson in his recent story about the character qualities among the Rangers big league players.

Good guys make our Opening Day even better. Hope to see you there.

Richard Greene is a former Arlington mayor and served as an appointee of President George W. Bush as regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency.

This story was originally published March 23, 2018 at 5:54 PM with the headline "One of the best days of the year coming up to bat."