COMMENTARY
The gold standard is Tuffy Rhodes.
Your age may spark different memories, but speaking as a baseball fan going on 41, it’s impossible to think of Opening Day and not think of Karl Rhodes in Cubs pinstripes. He played 225 games in the major leagues, but he may as well have only played one — April 4, 1994, when he led off for Chicago at Wrigley Field and cracked three home runs in his first three at-bats of the season. The first three-homer opener in National League history, the first three-homer-in-first-three-ups opener in all of baseball history, and off Dwight Gooden no less.