In search of the best Opening Day start in baseball history

A short list of players who have been in at least one Opening Day lineup over the last five years: Ty Wigginton, Lastings Milledge, Casey Kotchman, Brandon Allen, Yuniesky Betancourt and John Bowker. There is no special cachet that comes from being in an Opening Day lineup. No one will use the term “Opening Day outfielder” as a way to suggest a player is unique and worthy of special consideration.

The pitcher who gets that first start, the Opening Day starter, now that’s something people care about. It’s an honor people use to bolster Hall of Fame cases, something fans love to talk about every year. Every team gets to make a statement with their Opening Day starter. This is our best pitcher. We’ll face your best pitcher. It’s how baseball starts, every year.

The games don’t always play out as expected, though. This link takes you to an Opening Day in which Greg Maddux was out-dueled by Tony Armas, Jr. This one takes you to a Chris Carpenter/Pedro Martinez matchup in which the pitchers allowed a combined 13 runs in 5⅓ innings. CC Sabathia has started 11 Opening Days, and his career ERA in them is 6.12. For every can’t-miss duel that you remember for years, there are 20 Opening Day starts that are somewhere between forgettable and alright.

Our search today is for the best Opening Day start in history. Bob Veale threw 10 innings to out-duel Juan Marichal in 1965, and he did it because he was in the best shape of his life. Camilo Pascual struck out 15 Red Sox in 1960, and noted sequel Mel Harder once threw 14 innings to out-duel Bobo Newsom (in a game managed by Walter Johnson and Rogers Hornsby).

None of these games made the final round, though. It was surprisingly easy to narrow all of the Opening Day starts in history to just three, but the bigger problem is that all of those three are all excellent choices. I’ve talked myself into all three at various times while writing this, so I need to let Internet democracy tell me what to think. The three contenders for the best Opening Day start in baseball history:

Johnson was the best pitcher baseball had ever seen by 1926. Depending on whom you talk to, he still might be the best pitcher baseball has ever seen. He led the American League in strikeouts for 12 seasons, back when hitters were supposed to swat at the ball like obnoxious, primordial Ecksteins. He threw about 92 mph, which translates to about 33,000 mph today. When the Hall of Fame inducted its first class, he was one of the five players honored. He was a baseball deity.

In 1926, though, he was an old-timer of 38. He could throw only 229 innings the season before (the slacker), so everyone knew he was slowing down. The Senators lost the World Series the previous year when Johnson gave up nine runs in Game 7, which was the last thing fans remembered him for before Opening Day, 1926.

Johnson threw 15 shutout innings. The Senators won, 1-0, and it’s not like the Philadelphia Athletics were pushovers -- they had a couple eventual Hall of Famers, like Mickey Cochrane and Bucketfoot Aloysius Harry Simmons, in the lineup. Johnson threw more shutout innings than pitchers will ever be allowed to throw again, probably by about two or three innings, regardless of the circumstances.

The outing also reminded us all, 89 years in the future, that baseball writing used to be so incredibly badass.

The winter has not chilled the ancient feud, nor has time dimmed Walter Johnson’s luster.

Oh, damn.

Sullen skies, arctic temperature, and a baseball-hungry crowd of 33,000 persons, including Vice President Dawes and a host of other leaders of the nation, were evidence of the fact that this was a new season.

OH, DAMN.

Superb pitching by two great masters, airtight defensive baseball and the use of all the wiles and stratagems that either team possessed made the fifteen-inning contest yesterday merely a resumption of the hostilities between Washington and Philadelphia that raged for months last year.

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.

The game lasted more than two-and-a-half hours -- can you imagine? -- and Johnson threw every single pitch. It’s still the best game score in Opening Day history, by a wide margin, and it’s the perfect Opening Day start in several respects. It’s a relic from another era, a time when a pitcher threw until beetles crawled out of their arms and scuttled into the crowd. But it’s also one of the best pitchers of any era -- maybe the best ever -- making something of a swan song statement.

How did he feel after the start?

“I was mighty tired Tuesday night,” he said, “but I got a good night’s sleep and today have not a pain or ache anywhere. My arm feels just as good as it has any time this spring.

He had about a year left in that magic arm. He showed off the best parts of it on Opening Day, 1926.

The odd thing about this start is that it might not be the best Opening Day start of Feller’s career. In 1946, Feller struck out 10 and allowed four runners in a 1-0 shutout. The 1946 Indians weren’t going anywhere, but Feller dominated in the first game of the season.

In 1940, though, he didn’t allow a hit.

You’re right if you want to close the contest at this point. “There was a no-hitter on Opening Day? Good gravy, that’s my vote. You are all nuts. Of course that’s the best Opening Day start in history.” I can’t disagree. Except what are no-hitters? They’re a combination of luck and skill. They’re the skill that comes with a pitcher being better than the hitters on the other team; they’re the luck that comes with baseballs never finding a hole, never dropping in that perfect spot. If a pitcher strikes out 18 and allows an infield nubber, is that really an inferior start to one from a pitcher who walks five, but somehow doesn’t allow a hit?

I don’t know of a start that fits the first example, but Feller’s start fit the latter. He walked five, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled with how he was throwing.

Robert William Andrew Feller stood there in the dressing-room, strangely composed but happy, and said, “My curve wasn’t breaking the way I wanted it to.”

He allowed just one walk after the third inning, but he still walked five total. How much credit should we give him for keeping the ball away from fielders? The game ended on a reportedly brilliant play from second baseman Ray Mack. If an all-thumbs second baseman is standing in quicksand to the left of second base, is Feller’s start less impressive?

Ah, the age-old question of luck/skill in a baseball context. It will never end. The beauty of no-hitters is that they’re one part luck, three parts skill, which is all baseball is in the first place. Bob Feller didn’t allow a hit on Opening Day. Bob Feller didn’t allow a hit on Opening Day. You don’t think that’s the most impressive start on Opening Day? Did other pitchers allow hits? Oh, they did? Fine, your argument is invalid.

Unlike Johnson, this was just the beginning of a Hall of Fame carer. Feller broke out in the previous season, and the Heater from Van Meter was just ascending into the stratosphere, even though he was delayed for several seasons by World War II. He was just 21 years old. He threw hard, alright.

ZIP. You can’t read the label on that one.

If you wanted a perfect example of just how good Feller can be, how about a start in which he allowed exactly zero hits? Feller is an inner-circle Hall of Famer, and he had a no-hitter on Opening Day. That could be a mic-drop moment in this tournament. You’re looking for the best Opening Day start? How about the one where one of the best pitchers ever didn’t allow the other team to get a hit? Seems like a contender.

This is cheating. Cheeeeeeeating. Unless you have an open mind. Won’t you have an open mind with me?

Kershaw’s start is, according to Bill James’s game score, the 32nd-best start in Opening Day history. Remember the fawning over Walter Johnson’s 15-inning outing up there? He had an 11-inning, complete game win years earlier on Opening Day. The next Opening Day, he shut the Athletics out. Bob Gibson struck out 13 on Opening Day once. There have been legends who lived up to the legend on Opening Day, and how. Marichal, Gibson, Johnson, Feller, Grove, Glavine, Palmer, Drysdale, Ruffing and Lemon all had shutouts on Opening Day. What makes Kershaw’s Opening Day shutout so special?

A dinger.

Should that count? Feels like that shouldn’t count. That’s a pitcher hitting a baseball, which shouldn’t have anything to do with the best Opening Day starts in baseball history. Sure, Kershaw thew a shutout, striking out seven without allowing a walk, giving up just four hits. But he didn’t strike out as many batters as Gibson. He didn’t throw as many innings as Johnson. There’s no way he can compete with those starts.

Isn’t that a part of the story, though? Not only did Kershaw throw a shutout on Opening Day, but he drove in the winning run, too. In a scoreless duel, he drove a ball to dead-center in a pitcher’s park, putting his team on the board and in the lead for good. I don’t know what Jim Palmer did in his Opening Day shutout, but he didn’t hit a dinger, that’s for sure.

Think of what Opening Day is, what it represents. It’s renewal. It’s the start of something indescribably beautiful, even if only in the fictions you’ve created over the cold, damp, ugly offseason. And here, on Opening Day, a pitcher throws a shutout and hits the game-winning homer. He does everything.

Even more than that, if you’re looking to assign bonus points, it comes on the Opening Day after the Dodgers are acquired by an ownership group that gives a damn. The old guy was a befuddled robber baron who only knew enough to screw it all up. The new folks were willing to spend, hoping to win, and expecting to win it all. They spent half-billions to convince everyone of this, and in their first Opening Day, their best player did otherworldly things. Oh, and he threw a shutout. Against modern hitters, not the malnourished players of yore, mind you.

Do you take the all-time legend who throws 15 in the twilight of his career?

Do you take the all-time legend who doesn’t allow a hit?

Do you take the pitcher who might be an all-time legend, and who also hit a game-winning dinger in addition to his shutout?

There’s no right answer. It’s apples and oranges and aardvarks, but it still feels like something we should answer. Johnson, Feller, or Kershaw. If you have to have an Opening Day fight, this is probably the way to do it.

Happy Opening Day, everybody. Let’s baseball.

Thanks to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum for research assistance.