Funny, Rico was just thinking about that

Opening Day, that is. And here it is. Rico says he predicts Oakland to win a pennant, but not the Series, and the Phillies to win neither. (Check back in October and we'll see how he did.)
Rico also says he doesn't know how many games (if any; the ladyfriend doesn't like baseball the way he does) he'll get to this year, but hopefully a couple. The new stadium is nice, and we have two minor league teams in the area, both of which he likes even better than the Phillies...
Doug Glanville (hey, Zelig moment again; Rico knew a Doug Glanville when he was growing up; what are the odds it's the same guy... Bad, as it turns out; Rico was eighteen when this guy was born; but what kinda name is his middle one: Metunwa?) writes in The New York Times:

Opening Day is here and it is a time of great anticipation and hope. I certainly took part in my share of major-league openings, but no matter how many times I did, I always felt like a rookie all over again.
My first was in sunny Florida as a Chicago Cub. We were taking on the Marlins, whose pitching rotation then was virtually unhittable: Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, Alex Fernandez, Livan Hernandez. I didn’t start that day because I was the starting leftfielder against left-handed pitchers and Brown, a sinker-ball-throwing right-hander, was pitching for the Marlins. Since sinker-ball-throwing right-handers usually meant I would foul at least one ball off my left shin per game, I wasn’t that upset about sitting this one out and just taking it all in.
We lost that day, but little did we know that we’d go on to lose the first 14 games of the season, facing a constant barrage of Cy Young winners in the Braves’ and Marlins’ pitching rotations. Alex Fernandez made the pain of losing more acute by taking a no-hitter into the 9th inning against us one afternoon at Wrigley.
Opening at Wrigley in April was always interesting. One year, the Cubs were brave enough to play in sub-freezing temperatures on a day that our south side Chicago rival White Sox canceled their night game, when it was a few degrees warmer (despite the wind chill) than our game-time temperature. My teammate Rey Sanchez wore his signature face mask that made him look like he was about to join a secret society of blue ninjas. Then there was Chipper Jones of the Braves, who despised the cold. He wore so many layers he looked like he would explode if his shoelace came undone. I kept thinking about bunting towards him just to see if he would even bother moving.
Even stranger was the surreal experience at Olympic Stadium in Montreal. It was during that season when hardly anyone was going to Expos games. (Which of those seasons, you ask? Be nice....). Playing there was like entering some sort of time-space vortex where you would get out of bed, walk to the train station, travel underground to the bowels of the stadium and take the elevator to the locker-room level. Once you got on the train, you did not see daylight. The game could have been at noon, it could have been at midnight, and you would not have known the difference.
With the domed stadium only partly filled with fans, every ball hit and every conversation sounded like it was going through something Alexander Graham Bell was about to throw in the trash. Everything echoed, and the sound system made it sound like the announcer was speaking from a submarine booth 1,000 leagues under the sea. To top it off, he spoke in two languages, English and French, and the sound was so bad that no one could tell which one he was speaking in. As far as I was concerned, we were on the surface of Mars.
To kick off their opening day, the Montreal Expos took a creative page from the hit show Survivor. They had dramatic drumming, a dance team, tiki lamps with flames, and grass skirts. The players went out to their positions and snuffed out their lamps like they were eliminating someone. Since most opening days revolved around fireworks, Blue Angels, parachutes and flying mascots, the burning tiki lamps really took us to a new place. It’s really too bad only a handful of people were at the game, because it was the most creative opening day I had ever seen.
Opening-day games themselves are also notable for the monumental effect they have on your stats. Once the game starts and you get that first at-bat, anticipation is high: you’re squeezing the bat like you were trying to build a mound of sawdust at the plate. As one of my minor-league teammates joked after grounding out in his inaugural at-bat, “Oh no! I am batting .000, I’m 0 for 1!” One year in Florida, I did manage to hit a home run on opening day. It was nice to peek at the newspaper the next day and see myself among the league’s home run leaders, even while knowing that it would last for about two days, at best.
The start of a season isn’t all roses. As would happen in a lot of spring trainings, an environment where players from all over the world descend into one locker room will eventually cause a flu-like bug to hit everyone in camp.
One season, in Phillies camp, it hit us all the last couple of days, and while I guess that was better than the year we had to get emergency hepatitis vaccines, the entire team was still knocked out with a horrible flu to kick off the year. Usually the season starts after an off-day that serves as a practice day (or, if you’re opening at home, a “get settled into your apartment” day). Well, I spent that practice day lying on a hotel floor. I finally crawled to the phone to call the team trainer and hours later I was in some New York hospital hooked up to an IV. I played the next day against the Mets at Shea Stadium, but I might as well have been swinging a sledgehammer. All I could do was think about my bed and some chicken soup from Mom across the bridge in Teaneck, New Jersey.
There was also the horror of getting a phone call from my mom that my father had a stroke just days before our opening game against Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks. That was certainly a bad opening day— nothing like facing a 100 m.p.h. fastball when your father is hanging between life and death.
My last opening day was also the grand opening of the Phillies’ new stadium, Citizens Bank Park. It was cold and rainy, but it was nice to see the changing of the guard from Veterans Stadium (where I got the first hit of my career) to this wonderful new park.
This day that begins the new baseball season is more than just the start of something special. It is the renewal of the soul of the game. Looking back at opening days, a player can mark all the stages of his life. The day also continues the journey of a life in baseball, with players reaffirming their vow to play the game with everything they have, while living a dream and enjoying a passion.
And, judging from the faces of the fans I saw for so many years on opening day, I got the feeling it meant the same thing to them.

Rico says that the Phillies came back today from 10-2 to win, so maybe he's wrong about their chances, yet again...