The jewel game series: A proposal for the 2024 MLB season
By Bill Felber
MLB’s Opening Day jewel game
For much of its history, the MLB season opened at one of two sites. Those two sites were Cincinnati and Washington, D.C.
What a show it would be if MLB returned to that practice starting in 2024, with a season-opening spectacular pitting the Reds against the Nationals.
Both cities share a strong claim to being the site of an Opening Day “jewel game.” Cincinnati was home to the first openly professional team, the Reds of 1869, and as such can be thought of as the “birthplace” of the professional game.
Washington, of course, has the President of the United States, whose imprimatur upon the game (by dint of throwing out the first pitch) would in the concept of a “jewel game” be worth found gold to MLB.
Both sites have a powerful linkage to Opening Day, and therefore to be the site of an Opening Day jewel game. That shared claim is precisely why Opening Day ought to be split between those cities; in Washington one year, in Cincinnati the next.
That latter point may create some angst in Cincinnati, a city that takes a singular point of pride in hosting Opening Day. Only a half-dozen times in the franchise’s history have the Reds not opened at home, an occasion often marked with municipal parades.
Notably, however, one of those rare exceptions — a Reds season opening road game — was just this season. Thanks to lockout-prompted rescheduling, the Reds opened the 2022 season with a 6-3 victory in Atlanta.