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Facts about Baseball's Opening Day  
JUST THE FACTS 

Tags: Opening, Day, Baseball, Sports, Batter, Pitcher, History, Facts, Season, April

Opening Day is warmly regarded in North American tradition as the beginning of a new Major League Baseball season. It falls annually around the beginning of April, signaling such a generational feeling of rebirth that the writer Thomas Boswell once penned a book titled, "Why Time Begins On Opening Day."

	No Hitter - In 1940, a no-hitter thrown by Cleveland pitcher Bob Feller (remains only no-hitter on opening day).
	Presidents - William Howard Taft was the first U.S. President to throw out the first pitch to start a season (11 sitting U.S. presidents have done the same since then).
	Ambidextrous - Harry S. Truman, showcased his ambidextrous talent when he threw out ceremonial first pitches with both his right and left arm in 1950.
	Teddy "Ballgame" - Ted Williams had a hit in every opening day game he played. He was a .449 hitter in openers, with three home runs and fourteen runs batted in during fourteen such games.
	"Hammerin" Hank - On Opening Day in 1974, Hank Aaron ignited the crowd at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati with his first swing. It resulted in his 714th career home run, tying Babe Ruth on Major League Baseball's all-time list. He would finish with 755.
	The Greatest - Hall of Famer Walter Johnson was arguably the greatest ballplayer in Opening Day history. In 14 season openers for the Washington Senators, the "Big Train" pitched a record nine shutouts. His two most famous starts include a 3-0 victory over the Philadelphia A's in 1910 and a 1-0 marathon victory while battling the A's Eddie Rommel for 15 innings.
	1, 2, 3... - On April 4, 2005, Dmitri Young of the Detroit Tigers hit three home runs in his team's opener against the Kansas City Royals at Detroit's Comerica Park. He became the third major leaguer to homer three times on Opening Day, following the Toronto Blue Jays' George Bell in 1988 and the Chicago Cubs' Tuffy Rhodes in 1994.

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Source: Wikipedia – All text in this list shared under the GNU License

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