Last year, for my birthday, Hideki Matsui hit a grand slam. This year, I'm getting the gift of Don Mattingly. When he was introduced during yesterday's home opener at Yankee Stadium, the cheer from the crowd was October-electric, the loudest of the day. When you appear on Opening Day, you are appearing before the true believers, the people who skipped work, or took their kids out of school, or drove 250 miles for the occasion. Everyone in the crowd is in their Yankees regalia, hats, or jackets, or pinstriped jerseys. There were already people there wearing "Vasquez 33" shirts and special MLB Authenticated "A-rod NY" hats. But there were many more there in "Mattingly 23" shirts, some of them who have been wearing them for twenty years. Welcome home, Donnie, we've been waiting.

The US Military Academy Band played before the opening ceremonies and it could have been 1944 or 1954 or 1964 as easily as it was 2004. There are always the echoes of timelessness at times like this. But...

One of the activities of Opening Day, of course, is cataloguing what's different at the Stadium. No I don't mean now we have A-rod instead of Soriano, though there are some personnel changes worth noting. Eddie Layton, the Hammond organist for my entire life, retired last year, and was replaced yesterday by a man named Paul Cartier. The old matrix boards on the loge level that used to read Ball, Strike, Out have been replaced by snazzy new full-color Diamondvision-style scoreboards. But what's this? The out of town scoreboard in left field is gone (!), replaced by a NYSE billboard. An abomination. The new color scoreboards on the loge level run the out of town scores one game at a time, but from most areas of the upper deck, they are not visible or legible--and who wants to stare at one rotating score for half an inning trying to catch the game you care about? What a bad idea. Kyocera bought small billboards in the outfield now that carry a strikeout counter. Cute, but bordering on too gimmicky for me. And how about the fact that the vendors are selling "Crunch 'n' Munch" instead of "Crackerjack"? What's the world coming to? The next thing you know, Bud Selig will be trying to get us to sing "Buy me some peanuts and Crunch-and-Munch" because Crackerjack lost the product placement rights to a higher bidder.

These disappointments, these changes that always convince the die-hard fan that things were better in the past and getting worse as a matter of inevitability, were not enough to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd for live baseball. Sure some of us had been to spring training, and some had even gone to Japan, or at least gotten up before the crack of dawn to see the season's opener two weeks (!) ago live from Tokyo. But the reality of the season starting does not really sink in until Yankee Stadium comes to life. (By the way, I found I really didn't miss "Cotton Eye Joe," who has apparently been retired by the scoreboard department.)

I have been to four home openers in a row now, and this was the first one where I did not freeze my patoot off. I didn't even wear long johns this time, as the temperature was a tolerable 52 degrees with no wind. A light rain began to fall in the seventh inning, but it was of no consequence. Oh and did I mention the Yankees won? Not as dramatic a win as some home openers we have seen, but the Yankees have now won seven straight home openers, the longest streak currently running in the majors. (They've also won 12 of 13, and 18 of the last 21.)

Probably the funniest moment of the afternoon, for me, was when Alex Rodriguez came to the plate for the first time. The standing ovation that erupted as he dug in was genuine. So were he chuckles that followed when, as he fouled off the first pitch, everyone sat down abruptly. When he went to two strikes, the fellow in the row behind me commented, "If he strikes out, you know he's getting booed." "Oh absolutely," I concurred, as many people around me nodded. Understand, Alex, that it's not that people aren't ready to love you. They are. But they have to know that you can take it. It's a hazing ritual, in a way. Of course, he didn't strike out--he walked--so the whole thing was anticlimactic. (He walked in his next at bat, too.)

More comical was Gary Sheffield's at bat with the bases loaded. The way he waggles the bat as he waits for the pitch, utterly menacing. Then those incredibly quick wrists whipping the bat head through the strike zone... you had to laugh when the result was a swinging bunt that rolled the ball not even 20 feet up the third base line. The flustered White Sox waited for it to go foul; it didn't; and everyone advanced, the run scoring, Sheff safe at first. Poor White Sox. On Opening Day, the breaks go the Yankees' way.

Another moment for the crowd: the seventh inning stretch, where everyone sings along with Ronan Tynan "God Bless America." It's a hymn sung by the biggest congregation in the biggest church I know. You get goosebumps. You really do.

I almost forgot to mention three Hall of Famers. Only at Yankee Stadium would you find three Hall of Famers jockeying to throw out the ceremonial first pitch and also getting almost forgotten in the hoopla. Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, and Yogi Berra, all threw from in front of the mound. And don't think that we missed what Scooter has made a tradition of his own since October 2001--pulling an extra ball from his pocket and shovel-passing it to the catcher from the foul line as he runs off the field, in homage to Jeter's season-saving play that we know today simply as "The Play."

The only thing I had been looking forward to which did not come to pass on this great day, my 37th birthday and my fourth home opener, was that they did not raise the American League Pennant. What's up with that? In 2001 we saw the World Series championship flag raised, with the "ceremonial golf cart ride" out to the flagpole in Monument Park. Last year there was no pennant to raise, but this year there is, and it was hard fought for (in the case of Don Zimmer and Jeff Nelson and Karim Garcia, literally). I looked forward to seeing it raised and I'm a bit irked that it wasn't. Another tradition shot down? I was joking about the Crunch-n-Munch, but not about this. Let me speculate that the reason the pennant wasn't raised is because they are saving that ceremony to be an attendance booster on some otherwise light night in April or May. What other reason could there be for depriving the true believers of their communion?

Well, okay, I can think of one other time it would be apropos to raise the flag. How about the first time the Red Sox come to visit?