OPENING DAY- re-run from last year

There's nothing like it in all the world.

Fresh cut grass. Oiled gloves. The smack of a ball on a wooden bat. The sound of cleats padding over a base.

Opening Day for Baseball. Every team is in it. The sights. The sounds. The smells. It's a uniquely American experience.

Baseball is the only major team sport not played with a time clock. It has a rhythm all its own. It moves to its own time. 9 innings.

There's a line in the John Fogerty song Centerfield:

"Just to hit the ball, and touch em all,

a moment in the sun,

its gone and you can tell that one goodbye."

It sums up a lifetime of hope and desire- just to hit the ball and touch em all- a home run. Little boys dream of it- and old men remember warm summer days when they moved with a grace long since gone.

And then finally- the one movie that always makes u cry: A Field Of Dreams. We'll leave it to others to discern just what in that movie touches us so much, but this speech- by James Earl Jones as Terrance Mann to Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella- sums up what Baseball is, and always will be to millions of fans:

Mann: The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.