MLB Opening Day

The presidential pitch started with a very large man. President William Howard Taft kicked off the tradition in 1910 when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Washington Senators game.

Taft also accidentally invented the seventh-inning stretch. During that same 1910 game, the President was notoriously heavy and got uncomfortable sitting in the tiny wooden chairs. When he stood up to stretch his legs in the seventh inning, the crowd thought he was leaving and stood up out of respect, creating a tradition that lives on today.

Cincinnati historically got to open the season first. Because the Cincinnati Red Stockings were the very first fully professional baseball team in 1869, the league gave them the strict honor of hosting the very first game of the season for decades.

One president literally attacked the press with his pitch. Franklin D. Roosevelt loved the game and threw out the first pitch eight times, but in 1940, his wild toss actually smashed right into a newspaper photographer’s camera.

Only one pitcher has ever thrown an Opening Day no-hitter. Bob Feller took the mound for the Cleveland Indians in a freezing cold game in 1940 and managed to hold the Chicago White Sox completely hitless.

The Mets are the undisputed kings of the first game. Even though the New York Mets have had plenty of rough seasons, they actually hold the highest Opening Day winning percentage of any team in Major League Baseball history.

One player hit three home runs on his very first day. Tuffy Rhodes was not exactly a power hitter, but on Opening Day in 1994, he shocked everyone at Wrigley Field by hitting three massive home runs off Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden.

A future president called the game from the broadcast booth. Before he entered politics, Ronald Reagan was a sports announcer, and in 1988, he actually threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field and then joined the broadcast booth to call the first inning.

Hot dogs became the official food thanks to a German immigrant. Chris von der Ahe owned the St. Louis Browns in the late 1800s and introduced sausages to the stadium to help sell his proprietary beer, cementing the ballpark frank in history.

The Yankees once pulled off a massive nine-run comeback. Back in 1950, the Bronx Bombers were getting completely crushed by the Boston Red Sox on Opening Day, but they somehow rallied back from a nine-run deficit to win the game.

Snow has ruined the party plenty of times. Because the season starts in early spring, games get snowed out surprisingly often, including a famous 1907 game in New York where fans actually started throwing snowballs at the umpires.

One president famously ditched the game for the golf course. While most presidents loved the easy publicity of throwing the first pitch, Dwight D. Eisenhower actually skipped the 1953 season opener because he preferred to play a round of golf instead.

Walter Johnson was basically untouchable on Opening Day. The legendary Washington Senators pitcher started a record fourteen season openers and threw a staggering nine shutouts, meaning he pitched the entire game without letting the other team score a single run.

A catcher was the first to hit a leadoff home run to start the year. Just recently in 2025, Austin Wells of the Yankees made absolute history by becoming the very first catcher to ever hit a home run in the first at-bat of the entire season.

It is practically a national holiday. For years, fans and even some players have actively petitioned the federal government to make Opening Day an official national holiday, proving just how deeply the game is woven into American culture.