It's Opening Day in Cincinnati!

Opening Day 1971, The Big Red Machine

...and make no mistake you've never been to an Baseball Opening Day until you've been to the one in Cincinnati! It's a deep and honored tradition that's been going on since 1890. The parade stopped for a few years in the early 20th century but began again in 1920. Cincinnati is Baseball's first organized team and that's something that' never forgotten here in Cincinnati. Growing up I missed quite a few days of school and later in life work on this day, along with a lot of others! It starts the morning of the game with The Findlay Street Market Parade and then the Game. This year's Grand Marshall of the parade is Cincinnati Reds great George Foster. Below I left a little history of the Parade and Opening Day along with a web link on this year's parade and the history of Opening Day here in Cincinnati. Plaaay Ball!




History of Opening Day
Opening Day:
How One Game Became Cincinnati’s Baseball Holiday
By Greg Rhodes

Cincinnati Reds Team Historian

“It’s a holiday—a baseball holiday! Ain’t no other place in America got that!”
— Sparky Anderson

When Sparky Anderson arrived on the scene with the Reds in 1970, Opening Day was an established holiday in Cincinnati. You can’t find it on the calendar, but make no mistake: Opening Day is baseball’s annual festival and nowhere is it celebrated like it is in the Queen City.

But, in the beginning, it was just another game.

Season openers in the early days of baseball were nothing special. Cincinnati’s home opener, as was true with all the other clubs, drew little attention from the press and the public. There were no sellout crowds, no hoopla, no ceremonies and no parades.

Then in the late 1880s, motivated in part by the formation of a second major league, teams began to compete more aggressively for attention and fans. And opening day became the first salvo in the promotion wars of the baseball season. Over time, Cincinnati became the King of Opening Day in baseball. By 1900 most of the traditions we associate with Opening Day, were in place: capacity crowd at the ballpark, dignitaries and festivities, and the pre-game parade.

No doubt part of the reason the opener was so celebrated in Cincinnati was a quirk of the schedule: The Reds are scheduled to open every season at home. It has been this way every year—with one exception—since the Reds first joined the National League in 1876. No other team is granted this privilege.

Why the Reds were granted this honor in the first place has been lost to history, although it appears it was a combination of geography, opportunism, and money. In the early days of the National League, the Reds opened at home every season and apparently this was due to Cincinnati's location as the southern-most city in the league. Groundskeeping was in its infancy and fields were often a mess in the early spring. The more northern cities were happy to go on the road, and give up the opener for more comfortable conditions. Even when the Reds moved to a second major league—the American Association—for nine years in the 1880s, the Reds new league kept giving them the home opener. (Except in 1888, the only year the Reds were scheduled to open on the road.).....


http://findlaymarketparade.com/Opening%20Day%20History

http://www.findlaymarketparade.com/