Harris Vexley's Full Article (Unedited)

Every baseball season begins with the same sacred New England lie: this year will be different.

We say it in March, when the snow is still retreating in dirty, humiliated piles and the Red Sox have not yet had the opportunity to harm us in a statistically meaningful way. The grass is green. The caps are clean. The broadcasters sound rested. Even the bullpen appears, from a distance, to be a professional organization.

This is the dangerous part.

Hope, in baseball, is not a feeling. It is a recurring medical condition.

I know this because I am from Vermont, where baseball is not so much watched as inherited. My great-grandfather was a Red Sox fan. My grandfather was a Red Sox fan. My father was a Red Sox fan. By the time I arrived, the family had already lost several decades, most of its emotional elasticity, and any reasonable expectation of late-inning competence.

Still, every Opening Day, we believed.

My great-grandfather believed by the radio, which hissed and crackled like it was trying to warn him. My grandfather believed through the newspaper box scores, circling batting averages with the tenderness of a man annotating scripture. My father believed from a recliner, issuing small tactical recommendations to men in Boston who could not hear him and, frankly, had their own problems.

I believe through my phone, which is worse.

A push notification has no bedside manner. It simply appears and says, "Three-run homer allowed," as if notifying me that the barn has burned down but the chickens remain optimistic.

Opening Day Harris is always a disgraceful romantic.

Opening Day Harris says things like, "I like the shape of this team."

June Harris replies, "This team has the shape of a folding chair."

Opening Day Harris says, "The rotation looks promising."

June Harris says, "The rotation appears to be a witness protection program for earned runs."

Opening Day Harris says, "The young players just need time."

June Harris says, "I would prefer they stop learning in public."

As of this week, the Red Sox are 27–39 and last in the American League East, which is less a record than a weather report: scattered concern, heavy bullpen, chance of muttering after dinner.

And yet I am not angry.

Anger is too simple. Red Sox fandom, properly practiced, requires a more artisanal suffering. A slow-roasted disappointment. The kind that pairs well with black coffee, porch silence, and saying, "Long season," in the tone of a man describing a minor roof leak that has become sentient.

Each generation of Vexley men had its own phrase for baseball despair.

My great-grandfather said, "Long season."

My grandfather said, "Plenty of games left."

My father said, "They'll get hot."

I say, "I have muted the app for my health."

This is progress, technically.

Baseball is the only sport patient enough to ruin you politely. Football kicks in the door. Basketball runs you breathless. Hockey crashes through the boards with dental consequences. But baseball sits beside you for three hours and gradually convinces you that a walk, a bloop single, and a throwing error constitute a philosophical event.

This is why we love it.

Also, because we are not well.

The great trick of Opening Day is that it arrives before evidence. Before the standings harden. Before the bullpen begins entering from right field with the energy of substitute teachers during a fire drill. Before someone says, "He's day-to-day," and you realize, with horror, that so are you.

On Opening Day, everyone is undefeated.

By June, some of us have become educational institutions.

Still, I will watch.

I will sit with my coffee, or my sandwich, or my inherited anxiety, and I will listen for the old rhythms. The crack of the bat. The murmur of the crowd. The announcer explaining that the tying run is on deck, which is baseball's way of offering emotional credit at a dangerous interest rate.

I will remember my father, who became his father, who became his father, all of them staring toward Boston with the grim patience of men waiting for a cow to apologize.

And next spring, I will believe again.

Not because I am foolish.

Because baseball is the only institution in America that can break your heart slowly enough to call it tradition.