It’s opening day — the most hopeful 24 hours in a baseball geek’s year. To celebrate we bring you poetry:

How To Play Night Baseball
By Jonathan Holden

A pasture is best, freshly
mown so that by the time a grounder’s
plowed through all that chewed, spit-out
grass to reach you, the ball
will be bruised with green kisses.

Copyright laws prevent us from showing you the rest of this amazing poem, but if you’d like to see more of this and other baseball poetry please visit Baseball Almanac.

And Music:

It’s not the greatest recording ever, but it is the most wondrous geeky baseball song in the universe. Here are the lyrics:

cubs in five by the mountain goats:

they’re gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon
and the canterbury tales will shoot up to the top of the best seller list
and stay there for 27 weeks

and the chicago cubs will beat every team in the league
and the tampa bay bucs will make it all the way to january
and i will love you again
i will love you, like i used to
i will love you again
i will love you, like i used to

the stars are gonna spell out the answers to tommorow’s crosswords
and the phillips corporation will admit that they’ve made an awful mistake
and bill gates
will single handedly spearhead the heaven seventeen revival

and the chicago cubs will beat every team in the league
and the tampa bay bucs will take it all the way to the top
and i will love you again
i will love you, like i used to
and i will love you again
i will love you, like i used to

Go Cubs!

And what’s baseball without hot dogs … and and, of course, gratuitous pictures of bacon (mmmmmm, bacon).