It’s Time to Take the Field : Opening day: Baseball fans and players hope it signals the start of something big.

Maybe to some guys it’s just a case of another day, another dollar. (OK, if he’s an everyday major league player making a measly $2 million a year, it would be a case of another day, another $12,346).

But even in this era of bottom-line, big-bucks baseball, there are a lot of guys who would play on opening day for free.

It’s only 1/162nd of a season, one ephemeral moment of hope, but it endures as one of the few unchanged bastions of the grand old game. It’s a three-hour flashback to a halcyon peanuts-and-Cracker Jack heyday. For one day, nobody talks much about contract negotiations or court dates or gambling scandals.

Opening day offers a few hours for wild optimism in a sport where the very best hitters succeed only once in every three tries. For nine innings, every team is tied for first and every player is looking ahead to his best season.

For most fans, it’s a chance to get a first-hand look at that new--and hopefully improved--lineup. For the players, it marks the end of a six-week spring regimen of tedious drills and meaningless games.

And, for fan and player alike, it hopefully signals the start of something big.

This could be the year.

“I don’t think there’s any day as electric as your first opening day wearing a major league uniform, but all the rest are such a close second, it’s unbelievable,” said Rick Monday, who played 19 seasons in the big leagues with Kansas City, Oakland, the Chicago Cubs and the Dodgers. “There’s always something magical about opening day.

“It sort of symbolizes everything I love about baseball. Players are wishing each other good luck on the season and the challenge and the excitement of the unknown is all out in front of you. I imagine it’s like the feeling among the soldiers in a battle group about to begin a campaign.”

Hopefully, opening day can be a time to remember that baseball is, after all, just a game, no matter how much life-and-death importance some place on it. But you would be hard-pressed to find a player who doesn’t vividly remember his first opening-day performance.

Even though some wish they could forget.

“My first opening day was 1986,” Angel first baseman Wally Joyner said. “I was nervous and really excited. I had made the club and there I was in that lineup with all those big boys (Reggie Jackson, Bobby Grich, Brian Downing and Doug DeCinces, to name a few).

“That was such a huge thrill. And I’ll never forget my first at-bat. Mike Moore was pitching. He jammed me and I took this raging swing and he had to come in to catch the pop-up.”

Grich, who was in the Angels’ starting lineup nine times for the first game of the season, likes to recall his first at-bat on that 1986 opening day instead of his first with the Baltimore Orioles or his first with the Angels.

Grich had a little more success with Moore than Joyner did that day, hitting the Seattle right-hander’s first delivery of the season for a home run.

“The game (in Seattle) was on TV back home and that was a real thrill,” Grich said. “A home run on the first pitch of the season. It was great because I think that was the only game I led off all year. But it was a great start for what turned out to be a really good year for us.”

Some players relish the chance to recount their very first opening day at-bat, and wish they could find a way to recapture that magic. San Diego’s Tony Gwynn has had 1,531 hits in his major league career but he still can remember the joy of his first as an opening-day starter.

It turns out to have been a fleeting feeling, however.

“My first opener was 1984 against Pittsburgh,” Gwynn said. “Rick Rhoden was pitching and they had taken a 1-0 lead in the first. Then Alan Wiggins and I both doubled to tie it, 1-1.

“You’d like to think that first at-bat sets the tone for the year, but that was the last time I’ve had a hit in my first at-bat on opening day.”

A lot of players aren’t even concerned about getting a hit, though. They set their opening-day sights a bit lower, as in attempting to make it to the foul line for the pregame introductions without falling on their face.

“Seventy-eight was my first full year with the Tigers, but ’79 was the first time I was in the starting lineup on opening day,” said Angel catcher Lance Parrish, who took the confidence of a 14-homer rookie season onto the field that day. “Still, I was a nervous wreck. I just remember making a deal with myself that I wouldn’t make any huge mistakes and totally embarrass myself.”

Monday, now a broadcaster for the Padres, says an opening day is like a Championship Series or a World Series in that a player must control his emotions because “the adrenaline level is way off the Richter scale.”

And everything is magnified.

“Opening day is always special, but I think it’s even a bigger event back East,” Parrish said. “I guess it’s because they’ve been cooped up all winter and they finally get to do something outdoors.

“It’s sort of like a signal that spring is here and it’s all anyone in the town talks about. Every news station leads their broadcast with how the Tigers fared that night. The mayor and sometimes even the governor are there. It’s really a feature occasion for the whole community.”

Some players might be seeking personal glory and others might be simply trying to avoid ridicule, but Gwynn believes opening day should be a celebration of the team.

“Opening day is more of a team-oriented event than an individual thing to me,” he said. “Over the course of 162 games, your personal numbers will either add up or they won’t.

“You’d like to think of it as an indicator of how you’re going to do as a team, though. Of course, we’ve lost six openers in a row, so, for the past six years, we’ve had to use that ‘heck, there’s a 161 more to go’ line.”

Gwynn laughed. And then he leaned forward as if he was going to reveal a secret.

“I tell you why opening day is really so special. It means you’re playing another year.”

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