Ready for the call to ‘play ball?’

Hooray! Major League Baseball arrives early this year. Traditional Opening Day is Friday, March 28, the earliest in the “modern era” of the game, which dates back to 1900…when the tracking of player statistics began in earnest.

There have been some “international openers” to occur earlier in past years, and 2019 is no exception, as the Oakland Athletics will play the Seattle Mariners on March 20 and 21 in Tokyo, Japan.

All 30 major league teams are scheduled to play on March 28, and that’s when the fun begins.

Rogers Hornsby of Winters, Texas, a 1942 Hall of Famer, would have loved the early start date. “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring,” he said.

Hornsby is considered to be the greatest right-handed hitter in baseball history. His .358 lifetime mark for 23 big league campaigns is the highest ever for right-handed batters. He won seven National League batting titles.

On the other side of the plate, the best left-handed hitter of all time was Ty Cobb of Narrows, Ga. He played for 24 seasons in the American League, mostly with the Detroit Tigers, posting a lifetime batting average of .367. Cobb led the league in hitting 12 times. Cobb was one of six players selected in the inaugural class for the Hall of Fame in 1936.

Cobb said: “Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It’s a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.”

Another 23-year performer and Hall of Famer from the class of 1989 is Carl Yastrzemski of Bridgehampton, N.Y. He played exclusively with the Boston Red Sox in the American League. Yastrzemski was first American Leaguer to record 3,000 hits and hit 400 home runs. He finished his career with 3,419 hits, eighth most all-time.

Like Hornsby and Cobb, Yastrzemski believed baseball was his life, having said: “I think about baseball when I wake up in the morning. I think about it all day, and I dream about it at night. The only time I don’t think about it is when I’m playing it.”

From the fan’s perspective, consider this assessment by Mary Schmich, a syndicated columnist with the Chicago Tribune: “Opening day. All you have to do is say the words…and you feel the shutters thrown wide, the room air out, the light pour in. In baseball, no other day is so pure with possibility. No scores yet, no losses, no blame or disappointment.”

Every baseball player dreams of winning a World Series ring, but only one man in the history of Major League Baseball has earned 10 rings.

He was Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra of St. Louis, Mo. He played for 19 seasons, all in New York. He spent 18 years with the Yankees in the American League, and his final season as manager and part-time player was with the Mets in the National League.

One of baseball’s greatest catchers, Yogi Berra entered the Hall of Fame in 1972, as a three-time American League Most Valuable Player Award winner, with a .285 career batting average.

About the nickname: A group of boys who played American Legion baseball together in St. Louis in 1942 went to a summer afternoon movie, and the travelogue was about India, showing a yogi (one who practices yoga). Jack Maguire told his friend, Lawrence, “the guy on the screen looks like you; I’m going to start calling you ‘Yogi.’”

As a member of the Yankees, Berra helped managers Buddy Harris win the World Series in 1947 and Ralph Houck win a pair in 1961 and 1962. In between was the Casey Stengel era (a 12-year span). With Stengel at the helm, the Yankees won 10 American League championships and seven World Series titles. Those Yankee teams were loved by their fans…but hated by everyone else, especially people who rooted for Boston, Cleveland and Detroit.

Stengel hailed from Kansas City, Mo., so he and Berra had “statehood” in common. Stengel and Berra became a comedy routine, although they didn’t know it at the time. Stengel set the stage when he said baseball is a pretty simple game.” Dagnabbit, he’s right.

“There are just three things that can happen: You can win, you can lose or you can get rained out.”

So, at first, there was “Stengelese.” It was followed by “Yogi-isms,” stated Stan Silliman, an American sports humorist, who wrote a column in 2010 that was a “Casey v. Yogi” faceoff.

In spring training, Stengel would say: “All right, everybody line up alphabetically according to your height.” Yogi countered: “Pair ‘em up in threes.”

Stengel said: “Managing is getting paid for home runs someone else hits.” Berra said: “He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.”

Stengel said: “When you are younger, you get blamed for crimes you never committed; when you’re older, you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.”

Berra said: “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”

Yogi was also an economics guru: “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

Amen to that…especially at the concession stand. But what the heck: “Play ball.”