My favorite day, 2010

I'll be at Fenway Park tonight for Yankees-Red Sox, and that'll be my 21st Opening Day in a 23-year span. Here's a list of my first 18 openers. In my Opening Day blog post from last year, I included a synopsis of my 2008 opener. And here's my 2009 addendum:

20. April 6, 2009. Mets 2, Reds 1, at Great American Ball Park.Has there ever been a greater Opening Day tease? Big-name acquisitions J.J. Putz and Francisco Rodriguez did their jobs in protecting a small lead for Johan Santana, in a game that proved to not at all forecast what would happen.

For curiosity's sake, I checked out all of the openers from last April 6. The Cardinals blew a ninth-inning lead to PIttsburgh, Arizona came back to beat Colorado and CC Sabathia got rocked against the Yankees. So let's not get carried away with anything that transpires in the next 48 hours or so.

(Of course, Arizona lost Brandon Webb to injury in that game, and that turned out to be pretty meaningful).

But our excitement is understandable. It's always great to see meaningful results for the first time in five months, especially following seven weeks of spring training.

Happy Opening Day to all, and good luck to your respective teams.

--Here, you can find all of the contents of our baseball preview section . Included are 10 storylines to monitor and my column about baseball kicking off a new decade. I almost never quote fellow writers for stories - after all, why promote the competition. But for historical perspective, I felt very comfortable going to the ageless Roger Angell, whom I've grown fortunate enough to know some.

Here's my Crystal Ball, AL overview, NL overview and, by division - AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL Central and NL West. And there are many other, superb contributions from the rest of Newday's staff.

--For my Sunday Insider, I wrote about Bloomberg's foray into baseball and all professional sports. The folks at Bloomberg _ Jay B. Lee, Bo Moon and Steve Orloan - took some time last week to explain their software to me, over at Bloomberg headquarters. From my layman's eye, I thought it was appealing both to fantasy players and to actual teams. Although teams are very secretive and protective when it comes to this stuff.

For the story, I included an analysis of how many homers Jason Bay would've hit if he had played all of his 2009 games at Citi Field. For another comparable, I asked the Bloomberg folks to call up all 33 of David Wright's 2008 home runs _ the data pinpoints the precise distances and locations of the homers _ and put them against the Citi Field dimensions.

According to such a projection, if Wright had played all 160 of his 2008 games at Citi Field, he would've lost...zero of his homers. I found that particularly interesting, given the study last year that concluded Wright lost a number of homers to Citi Field. Maybe Wright just wasn't driving the ball the same way last year?

The Insider also contains thoughts from scouts and a proposed playoff schedule.

--Looks like all of the Yankees with health questions are good to go for tonight.

--NaOH sent us this link to It's About The Money, a must-read about HGH and its complexities. Bottom line: We're not at all clear exactly how (and how much) HGH actually helps athletes. I asked Gary Wadler this a few weeks ago, and even he offered a rather vague answer.

So given how little evidence there is of HGH's impact, perhaps it's not so imperative to start implementing HGH blood testing.

--Self-promotion alert: Before tonight's game, watch "Baseball 2010: This is Big," a season preview of the Yankees and Mets, on New York's WPIX (Channel 11) and you'll see me in a couple of segments, offering some thoughts on the two local nines and their competition.

--And don't forget, if you haven't submitted your predictions for the upcoming season, go to the post below this and participate in our competition. You have until the first pitch of tonight's game to do so.