Buckley: 'Opening Day' 2024 at Fenway Park will be filled with emotions, as it should be (2024)

BOSTON — Major League Baseball has done plenty of tinkering over the past three decades, what with all the new ballparks, the gambling, the funky rule changes, games played in Sydney and Seoul, streaming services, and, now, if the sun is right, see-through uniforms.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Opening Day. And let’s be clear: For this discussion, “Opening Day” is what goes on the marquee when a team plays its first home game of the season, even if said team began the campaign on the road. And so when the Red Sox host the Baltimore Orioles Tuesday afternoon at Fenway Park, this after beginning their season with 10 games of hopscotching from Seattle to Oakland to Anaheim, it’s still going to be Opening Day on my scorecard. We’ll note it’s technically “the home opener,” but that’s just to appease by-the-book editors.

Opening Day 2024 at Fenway Park is going to be a parade of emotions. In addition to celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Red Sox and their epic October ride to the club’s first World Series championship in 86 years, the pregame ceremony will honor the memories of three beloved members of the Sox family. Tim Wakefield, the iconic and stoic knuckleballer who was a member of two World Series-winning editions of the Red Sox (’04, ’07), was just 57 when he died on Oct. 1, the last day of the 2023 regular season. His beloved wife Stacy, 53, died in February. And just last week, Larry Lucchino died. The longtime president of the Red Sox and the man whose vision inspired an era of lovely retro ballparks throughout North America was 78.

Tim Wakefield, Stacy Wakefield and Larry Lucchino waged personal battles with cancer. They also battled cancer on the big stage as ardent supporters of the Jimmy Fund. Given that the Red Sox and Jimmy Fund are practically partners in the ceaseless fight to beat cancer, that’ll bring an added and important measure of poignancy to the pregame ceremony at Fenway Park on Tuesday.

And yet it’s the perfect time to remember Tim Wakefield, Stacy Wakefield and Larry Lucchino, for the simple reason that Opening Day is supposed to be a parade of emotions. By its very nature — a new beginning, along with a nod to the past — Opening Day has the power to bring about a tear or two, or, at the least, a flood of pleasant memories.

Let me start, and then you can recall your own Opening Day memories. (And you will, trust me.) I can’t step inside Fenway Park, especially on Opening Day, without thinking about my late brother, Paul Buckley. You know how, in the old days, kids would skip school to go to Opening Day. Paul did that and then taught me how to do it. On Opening Day, I think of my late uncle, Bill Fitzgerald, a longtime Fenway Park usher whose turf was the box seats directly behind the Red Sox dugout. Through Uncle Frannie, as he was called in the family, we had access to Fenway. And then, after the third inning, once my uncle had determined which high rollers were no-shows for that day’s game, we’d report to Frannie and be ushered to our box seats.

And then there was that time, in 1972, when a neighborhood kid, Bobby Tingle, just a little sixth-grader at Longfellow School in Cambridge, went to Opening Day and then went out of his mind when he spotted a foul ball that was wedged on the lower, first-base side of the screen behind home plate. Bobby caused quite a scene when he decided to climb up to the screen to fetch the ball, after which, on the way down, he was assisted by plate umpire Bill Haller, who is better remembered for a rip-roaring 1980 argument with Orioles manager Earl Weaver that’ll live forever on YouTube.

Tingle’s screen climb was such a big deal that the old Evening Globe gave it three-quarters of a page that included a bylined story and three photos, and the Boston Record-American ran a front-page photo with a story and more photos inside. Bobby emerged as a real, live Cambridge celebrity.

My favorite Opening Day? Easy: April 8, 1975. It was Henry Aaron’s first game with the Milwaukee Brewers, making this Hammerin’ Hank’s first American League game since breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record the year before with the Atlanta Braves. It was also the first game of the late Tony Conigliaro’s second comeback with the Red Sox. Aaron and Conigliaro were escorted to the area between the screen and first-base dugout before the game to pose for a posse of photographers. I know this to be true because 18-year-old me, having skipped classes at UMass for the day, was standing in the front row of the first-base box seats, just behind the photographers. Thanks, Uncle Frannie.

And so it will be at Fenway Park on Tuesday. Everyone will cheer for the 2004 Red Sox. Everyone will shed a tear for Tim, for Stacy, for Larry. But from then on, and forever, it’ll be a keepsake moment, a story to be told, re-told. You’ll tell the kids, the grandkids, about that parade of emotions, how it was great to see Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, Kevin Millar and the other heroes of 2004 appear on the field. And how sad it was that Tim Wakefield, Stacy Wakefield and Larry Lucchino, three members of the Red Sox family, but, more importantly, three Jimmy Fund superstars, couldn’t be there to be part of the celebration.

And then baseball will be played, I guess. That’s the thing about Opening Day: We always remember those who are no longer with us. We always remember the quirky anecdotes (Bobby Tingle climbing the net!) and the pregame setups (Hank Aaron and Tony C. posing for photos!) even if we don’t always remember the game itself.

But there are 162 games in a season. There’s but one Opening Day.

(Top photo of the Red Sox celebrating after defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 3-0 in Game 4 to win the 2004 World Series: Stephen Dunn / Getty Images)