What we're looking forward to: First pitch

If I'm not already watching baseball, I'm just killing time until first pitch.

Even before I got paid to write about the sport, as a baseball-obsessed kid - and, eventually, a baseball-obsessed man-child - first pitch was always the central organizing principle of my day during the spring and summer months. Everything before and after the game, the tedious and comparatively trivial real-life stuff, came second. Schedules had to be arranged accordingly. Dinner starts at 6 p.m., and never later than 6:30. First pitch is at 7:07. I don't miss first pitch. And as soon as that night's game ended, win or lose, my anticipation for tomorrow's first pitch would already be percolating.

If we were going to the game, I'd insist that we - usually, Dad and I - allot more than enough time for our commute to the ballpark, just to give ourselves a little breathing room. There could be traffic. There could be a decent crowd, and it might take a while to get through security and into the ballpark. There could be unforeseen delays - like an untimely meteor strike - that prevent us from being seated and locked in for first pitch, and that's simply not acceptable. If we weren't in our seats by first pitch, there'd be hell to pay. I don't miss first pitch.

First pitch, after all, sets the tone for the entire game. It's the opening gambit, the first data point to parse. (Hmmm, his velocity was down there.) It awakens the chatter center in your brain. ("Humbabe!" I involuntarily exclaim after a first-pitch strike. "All night long, baby!") It's the first brush stroke on a blank canvas. It's a symphony conductor finally bringing his hands down. It's a promise that baseball, and only baseball, matters for the next three hours or so, and it's ultimately a moment so rich - as inconsequential as it may be in the grand scheme of the game - that baseball turned it into a literal ceremony.

More than nine months have passed since the last meaningful first pitch, an 89 mph fastball from Zack Greinke of the Houston Astros, who clipped the outer third of the strike zone and put Washington Nationals leadoff man Trea Turner in an 0-1 hole to begin Game 7 of the 2019 World Series. The world has endured incalculable hurt in the interim. The coronavirus pandemic, which pushed Opening Day into late July and precipitated a season unlike any other in baseball history, took a tremendous global toll, and continues to run roughshod throughout the United States.

Baseball can't itself wrest America out of this mess, but it can be a salve during these trying times, and the nightly promise of a first pitch can provide, for many, a sense of renewed normalcy and routine, or at least the possibility of a brief escape.

As such, when Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer uncorks his first pitch to Aaron Hicks, the New York Yankees' leadoff hitter, to begin the 2020 season Thursday night, it will be as widely cathartic as any single moment on a baseball field can be. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, baseball, and only baseball, will matter, and the horrors of the world won't loom so large. And the best part is, there will be another game the next day, and another the day after that. For the next two months, the next first pitch is always only one sleep away.

And I can't wait.

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.