In 1987 Francona was a player in the twilight of his playing career and made the Reds roster out of spring training, surprising even himself.
Teammate Ray Knight, who also managed the Reds, spotted Francona before the game and said, “If you weren’t nervous on Opening Day you were lying.
“The most nervous I ever saw a guy was Francona,” Knight continued. “I remember him sitting in the clubhouse and we never did stretching in the clubhouse. But there he was doing his stretching.”
Teammate Buddy Bell walked by and said, “You a little nervous, Terry?”
And Francona said, “Yeah, I’m nervous. I said I wanted to make the team, not start on Opening Day.”
Then he hit a two-run home run off Montreal’s Floyd Youmans that helped the Reds win the game.
Once upon a time, because they were baseball’s first professional team, the Reds were given the honor of playing the first game of the baseball season.
There was no other game on Opening Day, just in Cincinnati.
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
That is no longer the case, but the pomp and circumstance of Opening Day lives on in Cincinnati.
There is the Findlay Market parade, a press box stuffed with media for the only time during the regular season and a stadium jammed with fans. Schools have been known to permit students to skip school if they had tickets to the game.
Bell, a Reds infielder and Cincinnati native, knew exactly what Opening Day was about.
“If you don’t try to get out of school on Opening Day, there’s something wrong with you. It’s right up there with Christmas,” said Bell.
And sometimes the fans get their money’s worth.
Such was the case in 1974, my second season as this newspaper’s baseball beat writer.
The Atlanta Braves and Henry Aaron were in town, but the Braves planned to keep Aaron out of the lineup. Aaron owned 713 home runs, one shy of Babe Ruth’s all-time record at the time. The Braves wanted Aaron to tie and break the record at home.
But commissioner Bowie Kuhn stepped in and ordered the Braves to play Aaron. But he couldn’t force Aaron to hit a home run.
But he did. He launched No. 714 in the first inning off Jack Billingham to tie Ruth’s record.
“After the game, a writer asked me how I felt about giving up 714,” said Billingham. “I didn’t feel very good. It’s Opening Day and I’m trying to start the season off good and here it is the first inning and it’s the first pitch he swung at. I started him off with three balls and 55,000 fans were booing me.”
They booed Pokey Reese, too.
On Opening Day, 1998, Reds owner Marge Schott borrowed elephants from the Cincinnati Zoo to parade around the field.
Then the game began and Reese, playing shortstop, made four errors. After the game he said, “Instead of playing shortstop today, I should have been the guy behind the elephants with a trash bag, but I probably would have missed there, too.”
On the eve of Opening Day, 1999, Dave Burba was scheduled to start. But he was traded to Cleveland for first baseman Sean Casey. He rushed to Cincinnati and was in the starting lineup.
And he homered.
“I hit the home run that put us ahead and the excitement that was going on in the stadium was overwhelming,” said Casey. “When I rounded the bases I felt like I was jumping out of my shoes. That’s when I realized that Cincinnati is a baseball town. I remember thinking, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.‘”
Casey hit safely in all five of his Opening Days in Cincinnati, including home runs in 1999 and 2001.
Sparky Anderson made his managerial debut in 1970 after a Cincinnati newspaper’s big, bold, headline screamed, “Sparky Who?” when he was hired.
“We played Gene Mauch’s Montreal Expos, our last year at Crosley field and it was a cold, dark day,” said Anderson. “Lee May hit a ball so hard it was like somebody shot it out of a gun. It went over the big, tall scoreboard in left field and I said to myself, ‘Oh, oh. Have I got something here.”
He didn’t have May long. He was later part of the trade with Houston that brought the Reds Joe Morgan, Jack Billingham, Cesar Geronimo, Ed Armbrister and Denis Menke.
I received a bit of a tongue-lashing from Sparky after the 1975 opener. Pitcher Gary Nolan came out of spring training with an arm issue.
Before the game he was scheduled to test his arm with a throwing session in the bullpen. So after the game, being a dutiful reporter, my first question to Sparky was, “How did Nolan do before the game.”
Sparky gave me the evil eye and said, “We just won a great 2-1 game over the Los Angeles Dodgers and you want to know about Gary Nolan?”
I was suitably reprimanded, but before the next game Sparky was cordial.
The saddest Opening Day ever, in any ballpark, was 1996 in Cincinnati.
During the game, home plate umpire John McSherry suddenly whipped off his mask, turned and staggered toward the screen. He collapsed and died of a heart attack.
On Opening Day, owner Marge Schott received several ‘good luck’ bouquets of flowers from advertisers and fans.
The day after McSherry died, Schott removed the tag from one of the bouquets, scribbled her condolences notes, place it on the used flowers and sent them to the umpires’ dressing room.
A front office employee informed me of what Schott had done and I wrote about it. Schott banned me from the media dining room.
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