Opening Day didn’t go as planned for the Yanks but at least I had a good lunch. Burger with green Hatch chilies, cole slaw, sweet potato fries.

The Rangers welcome the Astros to the American League to kick-off the 2013 season.

[Photo Via: It’s a Long Season]

Opening Day. It is cold and rainy in the Bronx but it today is Opening Day and there will be baseball. It’s been a long winter and I’ve waited months to clap my hands and say the following:

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

[Photo Credit: Pictures for walls]

Ugly day out there for the start of baseball season. How’d you like to be a hitter facing Verlander or C.C. today? No matter, baseball begins and like Michael Kay at Mickey D’s, I’m lovin’ it.

For a series preview, check out our man Cliff doing his thing.

What else?

[photo credit: yehwan]

Home: Where we want to be.

Mike Vaccaro in the Post:

These are the kinds of days the old place was built for, when there was bunting draped all around her, when even on the coldest April days you could always coax a whisper of summer out of the sky. Opening Day at Yankee Stadium: five words that never grew tired across the generations.

The move across the street seems more permanent now than it ever did last year. The old place is coming down in hunks and chunks — “It looks like ruins,” Yankee manager Joe Girardi said — and soon there really will only be memories where Ruth and DiMaggio and Mantle did their finest work.

No, as much as the new Yankee Stadium saw last year — all those walk-off wins, all those pies to the face, all those postseason victories and that one final, glorious, championship-clinching win against the Phillies — today is when it officially becomes the Yankees’ home for good.

Happy Easter y’all. This was always one of my favorite holidays as a kid (one of the benefits of having a Catholic mother and a Jewish father–double holidays!). My mom was big on painting eggs the night before; we’d wake up Easter morning and have an Easter Egg hunt (and if the weather was lousy we’d have it inside).

Welp, today Easter falls on Opening Day, or Opening Night of the 2010 baseball season. It’s the 8th Opening Day for us here at the Banter and we’re thrilled and delighted to have you guys along with us for what promises to be another absorbing season of Yankees baseball.

Let’s do this like Brutus.

The 2009 Major League Baseball season begins in Philadelphia tonight at 8:05 with the first pitch from the Phillies’ Brett Myers to the Braves’ Yunel Escobar. The Phillies are, of course, the defending World Champions and my pick to repeat as the National League pennant winners. The Braves are one of the most improved teams in baseball entering the 2009 season, but one that I still believe will fall short of the playoffs.

The Phillies’ season may hinge on the hinge in their ace’s left arm. Cole Hamels should be starting tonight, but he’s been pushed back to Friday by the elbow inflammation which reared its head in mid-March. If Hamels is unable to make 30 starts this year, that just might open the door for a lesser team such as the Braves to slip into the postseason. A strong season from Myers could help keep the Braves in their place, which provides a nice subtext to tonight’s game. The Braves counter Myers tonight with Derek Lowe, who signed a four-year, $60 million deal with the Braves this winter and will be as important to their season as Hamels is to the Phillies’.

Full rosters below the jump.

Play Ball!

(more…)