Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning you’ll get a fresh, topical column to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
Roughly 12,000 fans gathered in Oakland for each of the four opening series games between the Athletics and Astros last week, many of them ready to unleash a torrential downpour of boos and bangs that’d been building for more than a year on baseball’s biggest villains. Despite MLB releasing its report declaring the Astros cheated during the 2017 and 2018 seasons about 15 months ago, opposing fans hadn’t yet relished the opportunity to shower the guilty players with their due derision after being forced to stay home last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.