Opening Day

I have found it quite hard to get into American sports, but when I lived in Cleveland I became hooked on baseball. We lived less than a mile away from Jacobs Field and I went to a lot of games. Two were particularly memorable.

The first was when my friend Dan Akerib (a dark matter experimentalist) and I were lucky enough to watch Cleveland come back from eight runs down, sitting just eight rows behind home plate. Wonderful!

The second was during an 80th birthday fest for Les Foldy, a famous particle physicist and great guy, who has since sadly passed away. Attending the fest were Gerard 't Hooft (Nobel Prize 1999), Frank Wilczek (Nobel Prize 2004), James (BJ) Bjorken and Mark Wise (no slouches either). The owner of the Indians gave his suite to twenty-two of us from Case Western, including these guys, for a whole evening. It's a lot different up there. In particular, I don't ever recall being able to get the attention of the dessert and liqueur cart from the nosebleed section.

Today is opening day, and the Indians aren't playing. However, since the Yankees are (and against my second team, the Red Sox), I can still enjoy rooting against them. The most important thing about all this, from my perspective, is that it's starting to feel like summer in the North East.