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Opening day marked the return of fans to ballparks across the United States after they were shut out last season because of the coronavirus pandemic. While there were small crowds for last year’s NL Championship Series and World Series in Arlington, Tex., the cathedrals of the sport were mostly empty all summer long.

Not on this day, though. These openers were all about crowds at Wrigley and Yankee Stadium. About the cheers in snowy Detroit, Cincinnati and Milwaukee.

Limited capacities were the norm everywhere but Texas, which was allowed to fill 100 per cent of Globe Life Field. But there were actual real fans everywhere, none of the piped-in crowd noise from last year.

Fans and players were greeted by wicked weather in much of the U.S. The Orioles-Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston was postponed because of wet, cold conditions.

In the Bronx, where the game time temperature for the Yankees’ game against the Blue Jays was 6 degrees Celsius, some fans entered the stadium with navy Yankees blankets that were still wrapped in plastic.

About 12,000 people were bundled up against occasional snow flurries at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, one of the coldest opening days in the club’s history. The state of Ohio allowed teams playing outside sports to have 30 per cent of the venue’s capacity.

The opening game between the Nationals and Mets was postponed hours before it was scheduled to begin Thursday night because of coronavirus concerns after one of Washington’s players tested positive for COVID-19. The Nationals issued a statement saying “ongoing contact tracing involving members of the Nationals organization” was the reason for scrapping the game at their stadium.

There were still some signs that baseball is a little different as the COVID-19 pandemic moves into Year 2. The biggest boos in Milwaukee American Family Field for the Twins-Brewers matchup arguably came in the sixth inning when fans discovered that the franchise’s famed sausage race would take place on the video board instead of on the field.

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