At some point, you stop counting how many Opening Days you have left with the people who taught you to love this sport. You just assume they'll always be there. You assume there will always be another one.

I think about that every single year when the season starts.

I was five years old the first time I walked into Yankee Stadium. I wore a pink princess dress. I had no idea what was happening on the field, but I remember the feeling of that place — the size of it, the noise, the smell, the way it made me feel like I was somewhere that mattered.

It wasn't until 2001 that baseball started to mean something deeper. I remember watching the Yankees lose the World Series to the Diamondbacks after 9/11, and thinking quietly to myself "It would have been so good for New York if they won." I didn't say it out loud. My dad was an Orioles fan and I felt too guilty to root against him. But Papa Marty? He was devastated. For the first time, I felt something outside of myself. Was it the game? Was it Papa Marty?

Then 2003 came. The Yankees lost to the Marlins. Something just clicked.

I didn't fully understand the game yet, but I understood that watching it with my grandfather made me feel something I couldn't explain. Somewhere in between the innings and the arguments and Derek Jeter being the captain — I became a Yankees fan. The fact that Jeter wasn't hard to look at didn't exactly hurt either.

2004 changed my life.

Papa Marty took me to my first Opening Day. We had no idea what that day would set in motion.

Twenty straight Opening Days followed. Twenty years of showing up together, of hot dogs and bad weather and late innings and everything in between. But more than the games — that day gave me a path.

Not many nine-year-olds know what they want to do with their lives. I did.

I couldn't play. I was terrified to stand in the batter's box, but I loved this game more than I could articulate. All I ever wanted to do was talk about it, understand it, break it down. At some point my grandmother pulled me aside and told me I needed to be more well-rounded. Find something else to be interested in. I just couldn't. There was nothing in this world that made me happier than knowing the game inside and out.

Baseball gave me my compass before I even knew I was lost.

I don't think any parent or grandparent fully understands the magnitude of a moment when it's happening.

There's no way Papa Marty knew that putting a Yankees hat on my head — that handing me a Derek Jeter jersey — would change the entire course of my life. He was just spending time with his granddaughter. He was just doing what he loved with someone he loved. And somehow, without either of us knowing it, he handed me my future.

That's what makes you stop and really think. You never know which moment is going to be the one that changes everything. Every milestone. Every new experience you share with someone. You just never know what's going to matter most — or when it’s going to be the last.

Papa Marty got to watch me on YES Network. He got to watch me on MLB Network. He never missed a show. If I was on, he was on his couch. That was just who he was.

What very few people know is that Papa Marty had always wanted to be a journalist. He had to give that dream up when his mother got sick — he stepped away to take care of his family because that's what you did, that's who he was. He never made it back to that dream.

But I got to live it for him and he got to watch every single second of it.

I really believe that was his greatest joy — watching me make it in the career he knew, from the very beginning, that he was responsible for. He knew what he'd built in me and he got to see it.

Papa Marty passed away in July 2024. It was sudden in the way that the hardest things always are — unexpected enough that you're never quite ready, even when you should know that nothing lasts forever.

The last game I saw with him was June 18th, 2024. We didn't know it was the last one. You never do.

I didn't realize April 2024 was our last Opening Day together. I took it for granted the way you take for granted the things you assume will always be there. I thought he'd live forever. Honestly, a part of me still does.

Every Opening Day, this hits me harder than his birthday. Harder than the anniversary of his passing. Because Opening Day was ours. It belonged to the two of us in a way that nothing else did.

I wanted to share this with you today because my subscribers are the people who show up for me the way Papa Marty always showed up. Loyal. Consistent. There, game after game.

Don't take today for granted. Don't take the person you're watching the game with for granted. Don't take the opening pitch, the first at-bat, the smell of a stadium on a spring afternoon for granted. It all goes faster than you think.

The Yankees are in San Francisco tonight. I'll be on my couch watching alone. Instead of sitting in that silence by myself, I wanted to spend part of this Opening Day with all of you.

Tonight at 7PM ET I'm hosting a free live webinar with some of my favorite baseball handicappers — breaking down exactly how to research MLB games before the season gets away from you. Sides, totals, hitter props, pitcher props. The full picture. So you don't have to figure it out alone.

Click the link below to grab your spot. Seats are limited and I would love nothing more than to spend Opening Day night surrounded by people who love this game as much as Papa Marty taught me to.

[SIGN UP HERE — FREE, TONIGHT, 7PM ET]

Every single one of them always will be.

Love, Ariel Epstein — The Prop Queen