The best of Opening Day

Congratulations. Somehow, you survived another winter and will be watching baseball today. You might even be watching baseball right this very moment. I don't know, I'm not writing this from inside your living room. But chances are that if you're reading this, you're a baseball fan and you're enjoying the pastime's glorious return. Opening Day is a holiday for us, whether it's officially "recognized by the government" or not. With that in mind, let's outline some of the Opening Day records being chased by today's greats.

The numbers you'll see below are courtesy of the Play Index over at Baseball-Reference, so what you'll see is actually the records for "team's first game" from 1914-2013. That should cover things pretty nicely, even if there's some small probability we're going to have the occasional erroneous result.

Hitters

• Most home runs (3): Dmitri Young, Tuffy Rhodes, George Bell
• Most runs scored (4): 19 players, including Albert Pujols, Emilio Bonifacio, Hanley Ramirez
• Most hits (5): 10 players, including Craig Biggio and Babe Ruth
• Most doubles (4): Jim Greengrass
• Most triples (2): 6 players, including Justin Maxwell last year
• Most RBI (7): Corey Patterson and Brant Alyea
• Most walks (4): 13 players including Mike Cameron, Gary Sheffield, and Manny Ramirez
• Most strikeouts (5): Ron Karkovice
• Most stolen bases (3): 6 players, including Emilio Bonifacio
• Most hit by pitchers (3): Glenn Davis

Pitchers

• Most runs allowed (12): Early Winn
• Most hits allowed (17): Oral Hildebrand and George Earnshaw
• Most walks (11): Herb Score
• Most strikeouts (15): Camilo Pascual
• Highest Game Score (111): Walter Johnson
• Highest RE24 (5.103): Bob Feller
• No Hitter (1): Bob Feller
• Perfect Game (0): Maybe this year!
• Fewest baserunners in a CG (2): Ben Sheets, Lefty Grove, Wes Ferrell, and Herb Pennock

We don't exactly have the budget to give away a ton of prizes, but go ahead and post in the comments section if you have any predictions about which records will fall today and which players will be responsible. At the very least, we'll mention you in a very nice congratulatory tweet. I'll venture a guess myself. Billy Hamilton steals four bases. Enjoy baseball, folks. You made it.

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All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.

Neil Weinberg is the Associate Managing Editor at Beyond The Box Score, a contributor to Gammons Daily, and can also be found writing enthusiastically about the Detroit Tigers at New English D. You can follow and interact with him on Twitter at @NeilWeinberg44.