The crowds were still limited because of the coronavirus, but opening day of 2021 looked very different from the stark scenes at parks last summer.
They opened the gates at last on Thursday, six months after the end of a brief and surreal regular season played before no fans. Opening day for 2021 brought none of the usual standing-room-only crowds; with limited capacities, the games looked more like sleepy gatherings in mid-April. But the buzz was authentic, and there’s nothing like the real thing. “Having fans here will make a big difference,” said the Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, whose team hosted the Minnesota Twins. “We came to games here last year to see some cardboard cutouts, empty stands, fake sound. It was like the twilight zone.” We now resume our regularly scheduled broadcasts. The coronavirus pandemic pushed back last year’s openers to late July, with only 60 games before the playoffs. Now, the first day of April meant the first day for baseball, and a scene that would have been impossible last summer. The first home run of the new year sliced through swirling snow flurries in Detroit. It was so confusing that the hitter, Miguel Cabrera — who is quite familiar with home runs, having swatted 488 in his career — slid into second on his trip around the bases, thinking he had hit a double. It was brighter elsewhere in the Midwest. The ivy isn’t growing yet at Wrigley Field in chilly Chicago, where the Cubs hosted the Pittsburgh Pirates, but Ryne Sandberg stood in the sun-splashed bleachers during the seventh-inning stretch and sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” with the fans. They swarmed around Sandberg — who wants to socially distance with a Hall of Famer? — but wore masks, as instructed.
