Sunday Is the Best Day of the Week

Sunday has always been the best day of the week for baseball fans. All the games, except ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball game, start early in the afternoon which means that you can look at a flood of box scores at 4 P. M. and 7 P. M. And then, after or during leisurely strolling through those, you may get Chris Berman doing the baseball highlight show before the telecast. Berman doesn't do much live television anymore (does he do much of anything anymore?) but he is always a treat when we can get him. And then we can spend a leisurely evening watching a game with old friends, Jon and Joe.

Sunday has been a great day for baseball as long as the Fan can remember. All the special events at the stadium took place on Sunday, whether it be Bat Day or Old Timer's Day or other special things like that. It was also a day when the big Sunday papers would be full of stories back when big Sunday papers weren't just big excuses to load up on lots of advertising. The Sunday Boston Globe was a perennial favorite because that's when Peter Gammons' column would be available as well as other decent writers from that part of the country.

But it goes back further than that. Sunday was the only day off for many of our parents and it would be a day for playing catch or romping around and having barbecues. The Fan is a bit fuzzy on whether it was Saturday that was the big double-header day or whether it was Sunday. It seems to have been Saturday...not sure.

Sure, there are still Sunday papers, but, unfortunately, the Fan is like most of this generation that would rather hop on-line and read the news than fight with over sized newspapers and get black ink all over our hands. Times change and unfortunately, the days of newspapers seem numbered. But one aspect has changed a little bit. Many of the old writers saved their best stories for the big Sunday paper. Now, most of the big on-line writers take the weekend off and so that charming part of Sunday has worn a bit thin.

But all in all, the enjoyment of watching, studying and reading about early Sunday games in this age of prime time television events for all those sports networks keeping you up past midnight, is still with us and hopefully, the almighty dollar won't change that any time soon. Because Sunday truly is the best day of the week for a baseball fan.