Bronx, N.Y., March 30, 2008 — I will be attending my 26th consecutive home opener on Monday, with the weatherman predicting a questionable day for baseball. Colder than I want, but I’ll confine my hopes, prayers, dances, whatever, to a lack of rain. Attending April ballgames is always a bit of a crapshoot. We sat through six innings of snow in 1996, and earned free tickets to Doc Gooden’s May no-hitter for our trouble. They played nine that day, with Andy Pettitte besting Kansas City’s Chris Haney. Three years later the 12-3 drubbing of the Tigers in a downpour was mercifully called after seven frames.

The weather is always a factor in April, as it was in the last one I missed, though I had tickets in hand and the day off from work on April 6, 1982. But the nine to 12 inches of snow dumped on the New York area led to the cancellation of that game, and the four that followed. By the time the Stadium outfield was finally cleared for an Easter Sunday doubleheader opener, I was pressed into “family” service, and was unable to attend, breaking the mini-streak I had already begun.

So it fell to me to start a new streak in 1983, and to get the Yankee ship righted (as the team did lose both ends of that Opening double dip during my absence the year before). But things did not start out very well. First, during the offseason the Yanks decided to shorten the distance to the power alley in left field, but inexplicably ran into trouble getting the project finished in time. Amazingly, they appealed to major league baseball to let them play their home opener in Denver of all places (there were no Colorado Rockies at the time, of course), and I owe mlb one to this day for turning that request down.

And so there were my brother and I on April 12, 1983, and seated in the third base side main boxes no less, as the Detroit Tigers came to town. It was cold, it was windy, it was damp. But I was where I wanted to be, and I did not let my spirits get down, or at least not until the 13-2 thumping the squad took that day got out of hand. But still, the game was played, and I was there.

Baseball was always for me a youngster’s game, and the youth inside of me just beams when a new season begins. We start each year tied for first, even this year after the Red Sox/A’s venture to the Land of the Rising Sun. And although the nuts and bolts of the game, the exploits on the mound and on the bases, are intimately tinged with the dreaded chance of failure, they are also wed with the aura of possibility. (And this Opening Day brings some relief from the itchy feeling I have had ever since a creepy October 2007 evening in Cleveland. Did anybody else’s winter feature that nightmare with the bugs literally eating your neck and lower face?)

At the home Opener, the stands are filled with people, excited, chilly and, six months removed from the last season’s denouement, filled with hope. Any kid knows that although pitchers don’t go 30-0, that teams don’t amass 162-0 records, and even that the great Mickey Mantle didn’t hit 1.000; what cannot be denied is that, “It could happen.”

For a hobby that had such difficult early years, you might think that Opening Days in Yankee Stadium have taken on a sort of love/hate aspect for me, but you would be wrong. It has just been such an easy day to enjoy. The tide on this one particular day in the long season turned long before the whole Bombers ship found its course. It’s a party really, and the outcomes have become such things of joy. Starting with the horrendous pasting the team took at the hands of the Tigers that 1983 day, the 25-year record in home Openers is an amazing 21-4. The 99 runs the opposing teams have collectively totalled in these contests compute to an almost exact four runs per game, but that total pales in comparison to the 161 times the “Boys” have crossed home plate.

You would have to speak to the schedule makers about the opposition, by the way. The Kansas City Royals have so far played the part of the Washington Generals to the Yankees’ Globetrotters, serving as guest victims five times, and losing all five. The Rangers have been almost as accommodating, falling in three out of three, as have the Twins. After The Unit quieted David Wells and the Red Sox 9-2 in 2005, Boston stands at 0-2.

Semi-newcomer Tampa Bay had lost their lone appearance in ’04, but their number was doubled when they succumbed in last year’s Stadium-opening tilt. But what of the Angels and the Mariners, neither of whom have yet to appear in a quarter century? And if you counter that it’s a quirk of an unbalanced shcedule, my reply would be instantaneous: How is it that the Orioles have not filled that role once in the last 25 years, and that the Blue Jays are about to make their first game-one visit since my streak started?

Andy Pettitte is the unquestioned Home Opener wins champ in this run, as he left the Bronx after the 2003 season with a 3-0 record. Jimmy Key was 3-0 in openers while playing for the Yanks, but only 2-0 in first games in Yankee Stadium. David Cone and Roger Clemens join Ron Guidry and Jeff Nelson as guys who have gone 1-1 in these games, but in Coney’s and the Rocket’s cases, they endured the loss as visiting players, wearing other unis. Frank Viola is the only pitcher to have suffered the loss twice in the 21 Yankee victories, losing with the Twins in both 1988 and 1989.

Other Yankee winners since 1982 include Phil Niekro, Dave Righetti, Charles Hudson, Rick Rhoden, Scott Sanderson, and Jim Abbott, along with relievers Eric Plunk and Mike Buddie. John Candelaria started and lost one as a Yankee, but former Yank Kenny Rogers lost wearing road grays, and not the white Pinstripes. Gladly, Kevin Brown did the same, with Texas back in 1994. It would be difficult to celebrate an Opening Day party with Brown at the helm without dealing with his considerable negative baggage. Bullpenners Scott Proctor and Luis Vizcaino have won the last two.

The weirdest date was a one-game home stand, in effect, in 1995 when the team played host to Texas on April 26 in a season delayed and shortened by the 1994 strike. The team won the game and then hit the road. Texas, by the way, has lost two of their three Yankee Stadium Openers in the last 25 years by identical 8-6 scores. The wildest game in 25 was a fairly recent one, when the Yanks outlasted the A’s 17-13 for David Cone on April 10, 1998. On the one hand, the Bombers trailed 12-5 in the fourth inning. But on the other, it was 1998, the year that “By the Way, the Yankees Win” became my mantra. Bernie Williams and Tino Martinez fueled the comeback, and Mike Buddie earned the “W.” None of the 10 guys who pitched that day remained with those two teams, but one has returned in New York. I’m speaking, of course, of Pettitte, who allowed but three runs in the ’02 and ’03 starters combined. Offensive heroics the last few years start with Jorge Posada, who hit a homer with two rbi’s in the 3-1, 2004 win; and Hideki

Matsui, whose grand slam represented the difference in 2003’s 7-3 win over

the Twins, his first day wearing the Pinstripes. Matsui also stroked three hits, scored three runs, and knocked in three in 2005 against the Red Sox. Jason Giambi’s three rbi’s in each of the last two Openers were key, but Captain Derek Jeter gets most of the credit for the 9-7, 2006 win over K.C. due to his two-out, three-run, eighth-inning, come-from-behind home run.

The 21-4 record over 25 seasons in openers in the House That Ruth Built takes on a special resonance when viewed through the prism of a new Yankee Stadium, scheduled to open for business in just 12 months. In the same 25 seasons, the Bombers have won just seven of the 17 games in which they’ve played their first contest on the road, so “mystique and aura” appear to have played an important part. Let’s hope they make the trip across 161st Steet. Newer fans conditioned to the first-place finishes the Bombers have compiled in 11 of the last 12 years, by the way, need to know that in the years when this great streak was begun the team finished fifth in the earlier 13 campaigns four times, and seventh (out of seven) once. The current home opener winning streak is 10, as the Yanks lost 3-1 to the A’s in 1997 in Mariano Rivera’s first year as closer. That game went 12 innings, with 2005 Yankee hero Aaron Small, of all people, copping the win.

Unofficial Yankee team member Robert Merrill (number 1 1/2) used to start them by singing “America the Beautiful”; and Eddie Layton tickled the ivories until retiring before the ’04 opener with the White Sox. With both guys having passed on, perhaps Ronan Tynan and Paul Cartier will fill in this time. It’s hoped Bob Sheppard and the “Voice” will make an ’08 appearance in the Bronx, but Jim Hall subs for him Monday.

One expects we’ll see and hear much of what we’ve heard in seasons gone by on March 31. Military colors in the outfield, along with a large unfurled American flag. Challenger the eagle has been retired but an air force flyover remains a possibility. Thin Lizzie’s “Boys Are Back in Town” will probably welcome the players back, with “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ‘n Roses throwing down a gauntlet to the visiting Blue Jays. Angus Young of AC/DC turns 49 Monday. In view of both the problematic weather forecast and the incredible streak of success the Yanks have enjoyed in these season starters, perhaps a chorus of “Hells Bells,” not an unlikely selection, will be even more appropriate:

I’m rolling thunder, pouring rain
[I’m] coming on like a hurricane
My light’s flashing across the sky
You’re only young but you’re gonna die.

Let’s see how Doc Halladay and his Toronto teammates reply to the challenge, rain or shine (I continue to hope).

It was a special moment when cancer survivor, Yankee hero, and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre threw the honorary first pitch to catcher Joe Torre before the 2001 tilt. Neither Mel nor Joe will attend this year, as Joe Girardi debuts as Yankee manager. Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford joined the late great Scooter, Phil Rizzuto, in throwing out ceremonial first pitches in 2004, with just Yogi doing the honors before the cold and the wet of the Sunday night tilt vs. the Red Sox in 2005. Reggie Jackson reportedly gets the honor Monday.

Someday maybe it will be me. Hey, “It could happen.”

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!