Ozzie Smith hopes to make baseball’s opening day a national holiday

Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith thinks the opening day of the major league baseball season should be a national holiday.

And he’s taking his idea straight to the top -- if he can get the 100,000 petition signatures required for a review by the Obama administration.

Smith has teamed with Budweiser for the campaign. So far the website set up for the campaign has collected more than 21,000 online signatures.

“There are 22 million people who have, some point in time, played hooky from work or school, so it’s already an unofficial holiday,” Smith said. “We’re just trying to make it an official holiday by getting those 100,000 signatures so I can march them up to the front of the White House.”

Anheuser-Busch InBev pointed to a survey of 1,004 Americans 21 or older, saying 10% of them indicated they had skipped work on first day of the MLB season.

Uh, guys, that’s 100 people. Maybe this idea is a few decades too late.

But, hold on, we’re talking about an extra day off from work here. Never mind. Great idea.

And if this idea somehow passes, let’s immediately get the ball rolling on another long-overdue national holiday ... Super Bowl Monday!