It's Opening Day!

When The Great Plotnik was ten years old, he was sitting on the bench with the rest of his Little League Team, boys from ten to twelve years old. The practice season was over and now you got to find out if you had been selected for the Majors or the Minors. Plotnik was small and as a baseball player would always be in the shadow of his big brother, but that didn't make him hope with any less heart that he would make the Major League squad.

He didn't expect it, though, which is to say that even at ten he was probably already assuming the worst would happen.

But it didn't. When Mr. Thorell called all the names for the Minor League kids to stand up and go get their puny little blue t-shirts and caps, Plotnik's name was not among them. He remained on the bench as the other kids walked away, lips pursed, heads down. Plottie sat next to the best player on the team, whose name was Dennis Smith and who seemed enormously tall, at twelve, compared to Shrimp-Nik at age ten.

"Does this mean we're on the Majors?" Plotnik whispered to his friend.

"Sure it does," he said.

What a feeling that was, and even better was when Plottie got to walk over to Mr. Thorell's gray Buick to pick his new white uniform out of the trunk. All the kids put their uniform shirts on. Plotnik stood among them, proud as a new nickel, gleaming in the shining success he felt for having come this far already.

The best was still to come. When Plot got home he showed his brother Shmeckl his new uniform and told him he'd made the Majors. Shmeckl smiled and went to his drawer and got out a pair of sanitary socks for Plottie to wear under his blue baseball stockings. This was a big, big deal, because unless your brother got you these sanitary socks, which were very thin and went all the up to your knee and showed bright white under the blue striped baseball socks, you'd have to wear your old skanky sweat socks, which were thick and didn't fit that well in your new rubber baseball spikes. With 'sanis' you felt fast and with sweat socks you felt clunky.

Pity the boy or girl who never got to stand in front of the mirror with his new uniform on, out of his mind in over-the-top-love with blue (a size too big) cap, undershirt with the blue sleeves, uniform shirt with the team name across the front, pants with black belt through the loops, striped baseball socks, sanis and rubber spikes. Maybe your brother brings you your glove and a new ball, so you can pound the ball into your glove a couple (million) times, all the while staring at how the whole process looks in the mirror. Maybe you forget for a few seconds how puny ten year old you is compared to twelve year old Dennis Smith.

It's Opening Day. Like today.