Opening Day!
For as long as I can remember, no phrase or day on the calendar has elicited as much or the same kind of joy as Opening Day of the baseball season. It is a day of unbridled optimism.
The long wait ‘til next year that began last October (or Labor Day or July 4th or even Memorial Day in a really bad season) is over. Next year is here.
The playing field, literally and figuratively, is level again. Every team is starting out at 0-0.
Anything is possible.
The spirit of Opening Day is such a force that it cannot be contained within a ballpark. A ritualistic rite of spring, it permeates everything, everyone, and everywhere. It is commonplace for Opening Day to be used as a metaphor for life, renewal, new beginnings, endless possibilities. Hope springs eternal on Opening Day!
But I am in a slightly different headspace this year. It may be a sign of these times, or of my age, or because it’s still March. Or perhaps it’s the aftereffects of that peanut I found the other day in an old box of Cracker Jack. It was rotten, but I ate it anyway.
Whatever the reason, Opening Day feels a bit different to me this year. In previous years, I may have held up Opening Day as a metaphor for the first day of school. This year, I’m flipping the script, seeing the first day of school, and public education, in general, as a metaphor for baseball and Opening Day.
The First Day – Let the games begin!
Even for those of us who loved school and were able to navigate it quite successfully – well, at least the academic part – the excitement that accompanied the first day of school was tempered, not as complete or unrestrained as on Opening Day.
First of all, unlike Opening Day, the first day of school also signaled the end of something pretty darn good in its own right – summer vacation and its long days spent playing every variation of baseball we could imagine.
And there was always some trepidation associated with the first day of school. It was a new adventure with new challenges to be met, with a new teacher(s), new classmates, and new shoes. Not to mention the non-academic part of school, which became increasingly challenging year after year until you finally found and settled into your niche (hello, band room).
But most importantly for this discussion, although the new school year was a fresh start with clean classrooms and empty grade books waiting to be filled in, it was not a new beginning with everybody starting at 0-0. We know that some students arrive at the first day of school months or even years behind their classmates. The same, of course, is true in baseball. Sure, every year or so there is a team that spurts from worst to first in its division. But there is a reason that teams’ 2025 projected win totals range from 53.8 to 104.7; and that about a dozen teams are given less than a 1% chance of winning the World Series when all the games have been played, and all has played out next fall.
An Uphill Climb on a Tilted Stage
The actual playing fields may all be level now, but teams don’t start the season and students don’t start the school year on a level playing field. There are disparities of all kinds. From the facilities and staffing that directly affect student/team performance and outcomes on a daily basis to policies, commitment, and investment in resources that shape medium- and long-term prospects there are differences and inequity that must be overcome.
Haphazardly throwing the most money at the problem is not a guarantee of success in education or baseball; but spending enough money wisely goes a long way toward producing a favorable outcome. Moneyball was a great movie, a good book, and a sound baseball strategy. As we learned in the epilogue to the movie, however, the strategy worked better when used by a team willing to spend more money. Without sufficient investment and adequate resources you get consistently low-performing schools and a baseball team that has won only two playoff series in the last 20 years (one if you discount the shortened COVID year) and is playing in a minor league park in Sacramento for the next few years until it can wander off to its promised land, a cozy new park in the desert.
And speaking of Moneyball and deserts…
Drowning in a Desert of Data
It’s not a coincidence (Rule 39) that the Moneyball Era in baseball and NCLB Era in public education occurred at the same moment in time; and that the promise of decision-making fueled by data failed to live up to its potential in both cases. In baseball, it’s not hyperbole to argue that an overreliance on data sucked the life and heart out of the game, rendered it unwatchable, and might have destroyed it if not for some timely rule changes.
Education analysts been less successful than our baseball counterparts in figuring out how to interpret and apply all of the data at our fingertips. That inconvenient truth, however, hasn’t stopped us from throwing data at policymakers and educators in the hopes that something sticks; the consequences being just as deleterious and soul-crushing as those encountered in baseball. Test first, figure out a purpose later is not a good way to go through life. Data are a powerful and dangerous resource, to be used in moderation by skilled artisans who understand both the data and the game.
But Opening Day Isn’t About The Game
At the end of the day, however, the metaphor falls apart because baseball is only a game, and education is a struggle for survival. Plus, the thing that makes Opening Day special transcends the game.
The fact that I became a Red Sox fan in 1967, in the midst of an 86-year world championship drought, and had to wait nearly 40 years to see a Red Sox championship did nothing to diminish my love of baseball. The seeds of my feelings about Opening Day were sown, nurtured and blossomed during those four decades. The “heartbreak” of coming oh-so-close to a championship in 1967, 1975, 1986, and 2003 was fleeting. OK, 1986 hurt for a while.
My feelings and memories about baseball have little to do with wins and losses. I remember that night in July 1967 when my Dad took me to my first game at Fenway Park. I remember attending Opening Day 1969 with my uncle. My first parent-free trips to Fenway with friends, riding the subway into Boston on a Saturday afternoon. That last game with my grandfather in the early 1980s. Trips to the Metrodome and then Target Field with friends in Minnesota. My daughter’s first game at Fenway and our family vacations to see the Sox play in Baltimore and Toronto. The memories of a day or night at the ballpark with family and friends last forever. Nobody remembers whether those memories came from wins or losses, good seasons or bad. Opening Day rekindles those memories.
I also have good, some even great memories of my days in the Boston Public Schools. And like my baseball memories, most are about people, not of courses, grades, or tests, but of friends, teachers, shared experiences. But school is different than baseball because the wins and losses matter.
Not fleeting is the heartbreak that accompanies the reality that Jonathan Kozol’s Death At An Early Age, an account of his experiences as a first-year teacher in Boston, in many significant ways remains as relevant today as it was when first published in 1967. In too many classrooms in cities across the country, students and teachers still face and fight savage inequalities.That heartbreak is chronic, and its effects are cumulative.
So, by all means, let’s celebrate Opening Day and appreciate baseball for the distraction that it is, the joy that it provides, and the memories it creates. And then let’s redouble our efforts and commitment to public education until our students (and they’re all our students) no longer have to wait ‘til next year and each first day of school is a fresh start on a level playing field.
Image by Ray Shrewsberry • Ray_Shrewsberry from Pixabay
Embrace the Absurd 