Dila Cakir

Last Thursday, for the first time this year, the Boston Red Sox took the field for a real game of baseball. From now until October, this sport will be a constant in my life—an unpredictable constant, but a constant nonetheless.

I love all of Boston’s teams—how could I not, growing up in New England in the early 2000s? Six Super Bowls, four World Series titles, two NBA championships and one Stanley Cup this century. But baseball has always held a special place in my heart, and I think its beauty comes from its consistency. The Sox will play almost every single day for the next six months. Yet, even more consistent than the game’s constant presence is the potential for something unusual to happen. Any game, any inning, any at-bat is an opportunity for a decades-old record to be broken or for a no-name player to make their mark on a game that has been played for centuries.

In this way, baseball plays right into my tendency to be a relentless optimist. Every Opening Day marks a clean slate, when fans of all thirty teams can hope this is the year they’ll make it to the World Series. More than any other major sport, a long season of 162 games is needed to even out the random factors that can swing any given game in one direction or another, meaning that even when it’s mid-July and your playoff dreams are fading, there’s still a good chance you could “just win a game” tomorrow. Come the postseason, even the lowest-seeded wild-card team has a chance to come from behind and win it all. And even if they don’t, there’s always next year, and an offseason of trade rumors and free agent signings is the perfect time to imagine the league’s superstars wearing your team’s colors. I’ll be the first to admit I spent last November just delusional enough to think the Sox could sign Juan Soto.

On a good day, a Boston team’s victory is just icing on the cake. But on a hard day, sports provide a much-needed escape. For most of my life, this has been a good thing, but like anything, the line between a simple distraction and a less-than-healthy escape from reality can sometimes blur. I think back to winter of my freshman year of high school, when my best friend approached me one morning before school. “How are you doing?” she asked, certainly referring to the fact that I had just found out my parents were getting divorced. (It was a long time coming and definitely for the best, but a lot to process nonetheless). In typical 14-year-old fashion, I ignored her question and replied, “Can you believe the Sox traded Mookie?” (which was just as inevitable but definitely easier to think about).

Fortunately, I think my relationship with sports and other classic escapes from reality—I’m a big fan of comfort TV shows as well—exists as a happier medium for me now than when I was 14. A temporary respite from stressing over school, relationships or just the chaos of the world, but not a permanent escape. I can always tune in for a few minutes at the end of a long day or check the score for West Coast games if I’m having trouble sleeping. No matter where I am, sports are something that makes me feel closer to home.

Over the years, I’ve also come to see the role sports has played in defining my childhood and my community. This includes the lighthearted moments, like bonding with fellow “J.O.B.s” during the first month of college over our shared fourth-grade memory of Super Bowl XLIX, when the New England Patriots came from behind to narrowly defeat the Seattle Seahawks moments before children across Massachusetts got the equally thrilling news that the next day would be a snow day. But it also includes the heavier memories, like watching my city come together and embrace David Ortiz as a local hero when he delivered his iconic speech at the first Red Sox home game following the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 before going on to propel the team to an unlikely World Series championship that fall. The one time sports came to a true halt, for a few months in 2020, I found myself finding comfort in them in a different way, reading “Moneyball” and diving into complex—and admittedly, quite nerdy—baseball statistics as a break from the constant pandemic news updates.

So now, as Opening Day gives way to the long season, I find comfort in knowing that anything could happen this year. No matter what does, there will be games to watch and storylines to follow. And you know what? Despite a rough first week, the Sox are actually looking pretty good this year.

Margaret Unger is a member of the Class of 2027.