With the iconic crack of the bat and roar of the crowd, Major League Baseball’s Opening Day celebrates not just the beginning of a new season, but also longstanding traditions, hope and a clean slate where every team starts tied for first place. 

“You always get a special kick on Opening Day, no matter how many you go through,” Yankees legend and Baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio once said. “You look forward to it like a birthday party when you’re a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.” 

The history of Opening Day is rich with traditions and special events that have evolved since the first National League game took place on April 22, 1876. Some are time-honored, like die-hard fans calling in sick to work. Others, like the Pittsburgh Pirates deciding to throw every Opening Day first pitch at 4:12 P.M., to match their 412 area code, began after Covid. Here’s a look at some of the traditions that help mark the annual start of America’s pastime.

One of baseball’s most enduring Opening Day traditions is the presidential first pitch, dating back to April 14, 1910, when President William Howard Taft became the first sitting American president to throw the ceremonial ball. 

“With Taft throwing the first pitch, baseball, as the national game, received presidential sanction,” Martin Babicz, co-author of the book National Pastime: U.S. History Through Baseball, tells HISTORY.com. “Thus, baseball and the United States became intertwined. You could not separate one from the other.”

Since Taft’s historic toss in Washington, D.C., during a game between the city’s then-team, the Washington Senators, and the Philadelphia Athletics, nearly every sitting president has continued this tradition. Franklin D. Roosevelt, an avid New York baseball fan, made a record eight Opening Day tosses as president—and one as assistant secretary of the Navy, when he subbed for Woodrow Wilson. Exceptions include Jimmy Carter (who did throw out a first pitch during the 1979 World Series), Donald Trump and Joe Biden (who did throw an Opening Day first pitch as vice president in 2009).

In 1973, Richard Nixon became the first president to start the season in a ballpark outside the Washington, D.C., area, Babicz says, when he threw out the first pitch at an Angels game in Anaheim, California, just 10 miles from his birthplace in Yorba Linda. (The Washington Senators had decamped two years earlier to Texas, and Major League Baseball wouldn’t return to D.C. until 2005, when the Nationals took up residence.) 

Traditionally, presidents made the toss from the grandstands until 1988, when Ronald Reagan threw the first pitch from the mound. 

Celebrities and athletes have also participated in the Opening Day first pitch. Notable figures include actor Robert Redford (Chicago Cubs, 2011), comedian Bill Murray (Chicago Cubs, 2012), rapper Megan Thee Stallion (Houston Astros, 2023) and Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio (multiple teams between 1963 and 1992).

Opening Day isn't just about the game; it often features memorable stunts. 

The popularity of Opening Day on the baseball calendar means there are never enough tickets to satisfy all the fans, Babicz says. In 1985, the New York Mets tried to serve those overflow fans by hiring comedian and Long Island native son Rodney Dangerfield—known for getting “no respect”—to throw out the first pitch on the second day of the season, part of what the team was optimistically billing “Opening Day II.” 

“The second Opening Day had all the fanfare of Opening Day,” Babicz says, “giving fans who could not attend the day before a chance to experience the hoopla.” 

In San Diego, fans themselves have turned the season’s second game into a special event called “Tony Gwynn Opening Day,” in honor of a Padres legend who regularly remarked about how that was the game when the true fans came out.

In the 1970s and early ’80s, the Philadelphia Phillies went all out on attention-getting Opening Day stunts. In 1971, they had the first pitch dropped from a helicopter. In 1974, the ball was delivered by a “human cannonball” shot 150 feet from a cannon at second base, landing in a net at home plate. And in 1983, a local weatherman parachuted onto the field with the opening game ball.

One of the team’s most unforgettable stunts involved Richard Johnson, better known as “Kiteman.” In 1972, filling in for a stuntman who bailed at the last minute, the local hardware store owner attempted to ski down a 140-foot ramp at Veterans Stadium with a kite strapped to his back to deliver the game ball to the mayor waiting at home plate. Things didn't go quite as planned: Johnson crashed into the stands. But he still managed to get up and throw the ceremonial first pitch—even if it was into the bullpen, some 400 feet from its intended destination. 

“I was just relieved that he was alive,” Phillies chairman Bill Giles says in his autobiography, Pouring Six Beers at a Time. “Generally speaking, a dead body is not a good omen for the start of a baseball season.”

Opening Day brings excitement to all MLB ballparks each spring, but nowhere is it celebrated quite like in Cincinnati. Home to baseball’s first professional team, the Red Stockings, the city has hosted the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade since 1920. (Prior to that, “rooters’ groups” paraded through downtown Cincinnati in horse-drawn wagons.) Since 1876, the Reds have hosted nearly every Opening Day game, with only a handful of exceptions due to rain delays (1877, 1885 and 1966), away scheduling (1888) and a lockout (1990), according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Theirs was also the first game held each Opening Day for decades, but scheduling changes have altered that tradition. 

“Once upon a time, Opening Day was reserved for home games in Cincinnati, to honor the 1869 Red Stockings,” John Thorn, official historian for Major League Baseball, tells HISTORY.com. 

The parade features local high school and college marching bands, appearances by current and former Reds players and coaches, floats and performances. It begins at the historic Findlay Market and winds its way through downtown Cincinnati. 

In addition to the parade, Cincinnati closes its public schools on Opening Day, according to Babicz. “I think that is a cool tradition, one every city with a baseball team should adopt,” he says. In 2014, a group headed by Budweiser and Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith collected more than 100,000 signatures for a petition to make Opening Day a U.S. national holiday.

St. Louis also celebrates Opening Day with a parade featuring current and former players, coaches, community groups and performers. The city’s most notable tradition is the annual procession of the famous Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales, who trot through downtown pulling their iconic beer wagon before entering Busch Stadium and around the warning track (dirt border) inside the ballpark, followed by Cardinals Hall of Famers clad in signature red jackets. Since the late 1970s, the Clydesdales have led the parade, entering through right field, where gates were modified to allow for the horses’ entry.

Opening Day typically includes a championship banner ceremony for teams that won the previous year’s league pennants and World Series. (Teams starting the season on the road delay the ceremony until their home opener.) 

“Not only World Series champions and pennant winners raise banners on opening day, but each Major League—and most Minor League teams—decorate the ballpark with red, white and blue bunting,” Babicz says. “A local dignitary, often the mayor or governor, throws out the first pitch. A military band often performs the national anthem, and fighter planes often fly over the field.”

One memorable banner ceremony took place in 2017, when the Chicago Cubs celebrated their first World Series title in 108 years during their home opener. In 2021, the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrated their 2020 World Series win in front of 15,000 fans—a welcome change from the previous year’s empty seats due to the pandemic. The Boston Red Sox’s 2005 home opener featured the team’s first World Series banner ceremony since 1918, ending the infamous “Curse of the Bambino.” The Red Sox won the World Series again in 2008, 2014 and 2019. The team’s  2014 ceremony proved extra emotional, as it also honored survivors and first responders from the Boston Marathon bombing the prior year. 

The singing of the national anthem before the first pitch has been a Major League tradition since World War II. Some notable Opening Day performers include:

Soprano Lucy Monroe sang the national anthem on opening day for the New York Yankees every year from 1945 to 1960. As the official soloist for the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, she once said she sang the song 5,000-plus times. 

Robert Merrill, a famous New York Metropolitan Opera baritone and a former semi-pro pitcher, first sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the Yankees’ opening day in 1969 and continued that tradition for 30 years. 

R&B singer Brian McKnight has performed the national anthem several times throughout his career, notably on Opening Day in Cincinnati in 2011, when he harmonized with his sons, Brian Jr. and Niko.

Kane Kalas, son of the late Harry Kalas, a legendary broadcaster for the Philadelphia Phillies, has sung “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the team’s opening day for the past nine years in his signature operatic style.

St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright didn’t take the mound on opening day in 2023, but he did kick the game off by singing the national anthem. The athlete and aspiring country singer received a standing ovation. 

Forget about the red carpet treatment: In Baltimore, opening day is all about the orange. Since 1996, the Orioles have run out onto the field across an orange carpet that stretches 280 feet from center field to second base as they’re introduced. 

But it’s not just the roster players who get this special entrance. On Opening Day, the Orioles also honor a “10th man,” also known as the Mo Gaba Fan of the Year—a tradition renamed in 2021 for Gaba, a Baltimore superfan who died of cancer in 2020 at age 14. The honoree follows the players and stands with the team during the national anthem, adding a heartfelt touch to the festivities.