Any opening will do

There’s apparently some big professional baseball event going on today. While I don’t care even a little bit, I will take any opportunity to mention Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game (Viz), which is about baseball. It’s an incredible series, so if you’re reading this, enjoy comics, and enjoy baseball, even the kind not played for millions of dollars, you could observe Opening Day by picking up the first omnibus of the series, which collects three volumes, or the second, which collects two. You can read the first chapter for free at Viz’s Shonen Sunday site. The third two-volume collection comes out in a couple of weeks.

I promise you, as someone who would not watch professional or amateur baseball under any circumstances and has harbored a bitter grudge against the sport since conscripted participation during my elementary school days, this is an empirically excellent series. While I can’t get myself into the head space of someone who loves baseball, I believe that this series takes the sport very seriously and is packed with details of interest and consequence to people who care about that sort of thing, but those details aren’t at all essential to or obstructive of the ability to enjoy the series for people who don’t care either way, routinely ask if baseball is “that game with the rackets,” and just want a good story with great characters. Which they get.