Bayou-Picayune Podcast, S02 EP16: A Sin Against the Baseball Gods

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Did you know the first time Major League Baseball committed the unforgivable sin of starting a baseball season in March (instead of April, as the baseball gods had always decreed it) a home plate umpire dropped dead on the baseball field?

It’s true.

In 1996, baseball opened with a single game on March 31 (Seattle versus Chicago White Sox). That game was an aberration because, as all real baseball fans know, the regular season is supposed to commence in April in Cincinnati because the Reds were the first professional baseball team.

Anyway, anyway, two things happened. That blasphemous opening day game may have started in March, but it went into extra innings (twelve, to be exact) and ended after midnight in April.

The baseball gods were not yet finished in their response to mankind’s sacrilege of starting the regular season in March.

In their wrath, they struck down the home plate umpire at what should have been the traditional opening game.

Only seven pitches into the game, John McSherry collapsed and died on the field behind home plate.

Do not try to fool Mother Nature . . . or the gods of baseball.