Welcome To The Big Show

Today is one of the best days of the year- Opening Day. Finally, baseball returns to our hardened winter hearts to warm us with the joys of summer. Except, of course, here in Detroit where winter doesn't end until mid-May. This is The View From The Light Tower, a Tigers exclusive blog where posts will help me, your humble author, to cope with the trials and tribulations of the never ending baseball season that I surely am going to have. It will also be a place for prime opinions on all things Tiger baseball. With the formalities out of the way, let's get to the season.

When Bondo rips his first pitch of the year into Pudge's mitt today at Comerica Park, a new season gets under way in the complete opposite way of last season. When Kenny Rogers toed the rubber on Opening Day last year, there were no expectations, no hopes, and little, if any, belief. Everything has changed. People are excited for baseball season again, in a way they haven't been in my 18 years of life. The returning ALCS champs will have a long road to travel over to get to that point again, but pretty much everyone expects them to. ESPN.com's Jayson Stark even went as so far as to predict the Tigers to win the World Series. Which definitely registers on my "Bad Karma Scale". But regardless, the Tigers are looking strong (even with the loss of Rogers until July) at the outset of a season for the first time in many years.

Opening Day is always one of my favorite days of the year, right up there with the first day of March Madness, the first college football Saturday, New Year's Day, and New Year's Eve. The smells, sights, sounds, and everything else that goes along with baseball comes rushing back in full force. It's beautiful. To be rooting for a team that might actually live up to expectations for once only adds to this beautiful feeling.

The season opening series is being played against the Toronto Blue Jays; one of the first season openers NOT against the Kansas City Royals in recent memory. It always seems like it's one of those two teams the Tigs open against. The Jays boats one of baseball's newest members of the $100 million club in Vernon Wells. Wells is definitely a dangerous player, but it ought to be interesting to see if he can live up to that stigma of a price tag. Bondo's opponent on the mound today will be Roy Halladay, year in and year out one of the AL's best pitchers. Roy should put up a good duel with Jeremey, but it'll be fun to see the, hopefully, improved Tigers' line up to go up against one of the best.

Detroit does open up this season without last year's steady hand Kenny Rogers. Kenny had a blood clot removed from his shoulder and looks like he'll be out until July at the earliest. This means that Chad Durbin is going to move into the rotation in his spot, but what it more likely means is that by the end of this month Andrew Miller might be playing his way into that number five role in the starting rotation. Losing Kenny is a giant loss, but it may prove to be a positive in the end for the entire team. It'll be interesting to see.

It's roughly three hours until baseball season. Welcome to the big show.