April 2: Opening Day

• Florida ------- 9
• Washington -- 2

It was sunny and warm when I woke up, and today’s paper showed the following line for the Washington Nationals:

Washington
W 0
L 0
Pct .000
GB 1/2
L10 0-0
Str W-0
Home 0-0
Away 0-0


So far, having not played yet, the Nationals have no hits, no walks, no runs, and no errors. They have no strikes, no balls, no wild pitches. It’s all new, and all the statistical grids begin filling with figures today. Even so, they’re already a half-game behind the Mets, who won yesterday. At the same time, my line for the season stood as follows:

Beerman
Light Beer 0
Heavy Beer 0
Peanuts 0
Crackerjack 0
Tips 0

By the time the season ends, all this will change considerably. 81 home games are ahead, most of which I’ll attend. The life of the Beerman is pretty busy in-season, with weeklong stretches of a game a day, then a week off for recovery and other events to try and work in: Soccer, Racing, maybe a concert and an occasional game in Baltimore for variety and a bit of extra coin. But Baseball is The Season.

Opening Day is a big deal; most often a sellout and in this case very near to one, a highlight of spring for a Beerman. Today the brass band played the Anthem on the field, and fighter jets swooped overhead. No presidential first pitch this year -- probably from concern that there would be a repeat of the Booing Cheney received last time -- and instead a small squad of former Senators players and descendents took one toss after another. Even Mayor Adrian Fenty -- the guy who vocally opposed the new baseball stadium that is now going up on the Anacostia River, the building that’s going to anchor an entire segment of city growth -- got to throw. I’m still not sure who actually threw the official first pitch.

Then the game began, and people started buying. I was working the Upper deck down the third baseline, with a couple of cases of Miller Lite, a case of Miller Genuine Draft, and a satchel of Peanuts and Cracker Jack. I’d walk down the aisle a way, then look up to see the raised fingers of a customer up in the 500’s, then I’d take a turn and pound up the stairs to serve. Pour two at a time, take the twenty, make the change, express appreciation at the tip. Toss a bag of Crackerjack to a beaming kid a few seats over, make a big deal about what a great catch! Head higher up in the deck for another couple beers to the left, another to the right, four more a couple of rows higher. Open, pour, hand them over, make the change. Over and over again like this for seven innings.

But I don’t tend to get too tired on a day like this; seeing everyone up there reacting to the game and summoning me and my beer throughout an afternoon creates a positive feedback loop for me, and their bright happiness today makes me want to keep going and make Opening Day endless. So I go out again after the alcohol cutoff and pitch some more peanuts around for fun the big shell of RFK empties and another Opening Day is over.

My sales totals were actually pretty disappointing: 8 cases of beer, 4 1/2 loads of Peanuts and Crackerjack, with far less in tips than I expected. Much of this weak performance has to do with adjusting from the simplicity of popping open bottles to the retro technique of opening cans, which I have yet to master. And the team lost while looking ready to live out the most dire predictions with a vengeance. But the game is sort of secondary now. The memory is of an almost packed house circling a green field, RFK draped in colorful bunting, and the sun touching everything with gleaming light.

They won’t all be like this, but we’ll take them where we can. Play ball!