Opening Day: Minor League Edition
There are a couple of Opening Days I attended at the Major League level: The first was April 5, 1993, at Shea Stadium, which was also the first game in Colorado Rockies history, and April 1, 1996, when Rey Ordonez made his debut with the Mets by throwing a runner out at home plate in spectacular fashion. (Yup, both Jason and I were at that game, although we wouldn’t meet until a year or so later at Oswego).
Remembering those games is definitely a story for another time; for this blog, I wanted to talk about something a little more recent: My two Opening Days in central New York.
The first one was April 4, 2019, the first game in Syracuse Mets history. This was a day I had been hoping for since 2008, when the Toronto Blue Jays ended their 30-year relationship with Syracuse. As each season concluded, I would scour local news websites, looking for any hint that the Mets were interested in Syracuse as their next AAA home. Year after year, though, my hopes were dashed, until the announcement came in 2017: The New York Mets were going to buy the Chiefs! I couldn’t believe it! I was still ecstatic days after the announcement.
After an awkward year in 2018, when the Mets owned a Washington Nationals affiliate, the rebranding took place, and the Chiefs, a name that stretched back to the 1930s, was no more: The franchise would become the Syracuse Mets, and opening Day was suddenly mere months away!
When the big day came, my wife Allyson (another Oswego grad!) and I got there super early and waited in line to make sure we got the giveaway, which was a trapper hat. (We needed them that day, because it was FREEZING.) Getting there early also meant we were one of the first to walk through the gates, and a picture of the two of us walking up the main staircase made it into the Syracuse Post-Standard’s sports section, which was really cool!
The 2019 Syracuse Mets was no ordinary minor league team. The S-Mets had several players with significant MLB experience on the roster, including Gregor Blanco, Carlos Gomez, Rajai Davis, Rene Rivera and Adeiny Hechavarria, and a few guys that made prior appearances in Queens, such as Tomas Nido, Chris Flexen, and Luis Guillorme.
Oh, and there was also some guy named Tim Tebow, whose presence garnered interest from all corners of the sports media world. Unfortunately the Mets lost that day, but that was a mere drop in the bucket compared to the overall experience. Following a rainout the next day, the Mets swept a Saturday doubleheader for their first victories in team history, which we happily witnessed.
The next Opening Day we attended was April 4, 2023, just last week. Even though the team had started the season on the road, it was nice to catch the home opener. While 2019’s roster may have had some MLB veteran star power, this year’s team – considered one of the most talented in the minors - has prospect power, including four of the organization’s top ten prospects in Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, Mark Vientos and Ronny Mauricio.
For all the hype around the above mentioned prospects, it was the pitching that stood out, as the Mets cruised to a 5-0 blanking of the Rochester Red Wings. And it didn’t take long for the band of prospects to break up: Baty left the game early after hurting his surgically repaired thumb and is currently day-to-day, and, just a couple days after the game, Alvarez was called up to the majors following an injury to catcher Omar Narvaez.
Last week’s game was yet another example of what makes Opening Day so great: It’s full of traditions. Say all you want about pitch clocks and shift bans and automatic balls and strikes and so on, but the red-white-and-blue bunting is still there. The national anthem is still there. The introduction of the entire rosters of both teams is still there. The boundless optimism is still there. (For at least one day, anyway…)
And, last but certainly not least, there will always be those two glorious words:
Play ball!