Opening Day In The USA

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 30, 2000 / 8:26 PM EST / CBS

Ken Griffey Jr. will be in his new Reds jersey.

Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa will have the first faceoff in the Home Run Central.

Andres Galarraga, Kerry Ligtenberg, Moises Alou and Jason Kendall will be back.

There's a new look to the official Major League Baseball baseball.

And John Rocker, John Smoltz, Curt Schilling, Kerry Wood, Matt Williams, Darryl Strawberry, Richie Garcia, and the American and National League offices will be among the missing.

The first full day of baseball in the new century - did those games in Japan last week really count? - is filled with a year's worth of plot lines.

"My son's skipping school on opening day. It's a tradition," Griffey said. "Cincinnati expects that a lot of kids are not going to be there."

Griffey renewed baseball's buzz in Cincinnati when he forced Seattle to trade him to his hometown team on Feb. 10. With their annual parade, the Reds who started play in 1869 get the most worked up about opening day.

"I can't wait to see Junior get announced," Reds first baseman Hal Morris said Sunday, a day before the Reds open the North American portion of the baseball season against Milwaukee.

"In '91, there was tremendous excitement because we'd just won the World Series," Morris said. "I think this matches if not surpasses that."

While the New York Mets and Chicago Cubs split a two-game series at Tokyo last week - the first season opener outside North America - the other 28 clubs were still at spring training.

Te rest of the NL schedule has the Cubs at St. Louis, San Diego at the Mets, Colorado at Atlanta, Los Angeles at Montreal, San Francisco at Florida and Houston at Pittsburgh.

In the AL, the New York Yankees are at Anaheim as they start the quest to become the first team to win three straight World Series since the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics. They'll be missing Darryl Strawberry, again suspended for cocaine use, this time for a year.

The Yankees are hoping they'll be celebrating a third straight title in October.

"I think there's pressure because we're the Yankees," Chuck Knoblauch said. "It's a double-barreled thing, because we're the Yankees and we're the defending champions, so everybody is gunning for us."

In other AL games, the Chicago White Sox are at Texas, Cleveland is at Baltimore, Kansas City at Toronto, Tampa Bay at Minnesota and Detroit at Oakland.

Two openers are scheduled for Tuesday, with Philadelphia at Arizona and Boston at Seattle.

Fans will see new crews of mixed AL and NL umps. The new union, which replaced Richie Phillips' Major League Umpires Association, agreed to the merger as part of baseball's elimination of separate league offices.

"Relationships couldn't be better and I think that you're going to see less and less controversy," MLB executive vice president Tim Brosnan told CBS News Early Show anchor Bryant Gumbel.

Garcia, perhaps the most recognizable umpire, won't be on the field and Frank Pulli won't be, either. They are among 22 umps still trying to regain their jobs, the result of Phillips' failed mass resignation plan.

Rocker also will be missing, serving a two-week suspension an arbitrator cut it from four weeks for disparaging gays, foreigners, minorities and New Yorkers in a magazine article.

Smoltz, his Atlanta teammate, is out for the season with a torn elbow ligament, but Ligtenberg, the Braves' closer in 1998, has returned from ligament-replacement surgery.

Kerry Wood, the NL Rookie of the Year for the Cubs in 1998, is still rehabbing from the same injury, and Schilling, Philadelphia's ace, is working his way back from houlder surgery. Williams, a big reason Arizona won the NL West in only its second season, broke a bone in his foot last week and will miss at least the first month and a half.

Galarraga, back from cancer treatment, has reclaimed his first-base spot in Atlanta, and Alou is back with Houston following a knee injury that caused him to miss all of 1999. Kendall returned to the Pirates after a gruesome ankle injury last July 4.

Managers making debuts with new teams Monday are Mike Hargrove (Baltimore), Charlie Manuel (Cleveland), Davey Lopes (Milwaukee), Mike Scioscia (Anaheim), Buddy Bell (Colorado) and Phil Garner (Detroit). Baylor made his with the Cubs in Tokyo last week.

Baseball's focus, at least for the start, will be on the NL Central, dubbed the Home Run Central. Can Griffey, McGwire and Sosa combine to top 180 homers?

"The focus on McGwire and Sosa comes from the media as much as the fans," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with that part of the game getting a lot of attention, as long as the teams are, too."

And, as always, owner George Steinbrenner will keep pressure on the Yankees.

"The pressure's always there; it's part of what we do," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "Relaxation won't happen, but confidence is there when you do it two years in a row."

The baseballs themselves will have a different look this year.

"We haven't changed the composition of the ball, just given it a different flavor, an opportunity for our fans to enjoy it more," MLB's Tim Brosnan assured Gumbel. The balls sport the MLB logo, rather than "American League" and "National League."

Special events will get special baseballs.

"Unlike in any other game, the ball is a real souvenir to take home," said Brosnan, "so we wanted to make a different opportunity for fans to get a little closer in these special events, to really know that they got a ball at the all-star game or they got a ball from the Japan tour or from the World Series."

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