Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning during the regular season you’ll get a fresh, topical story to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
Twenty-five years ago—long before Avengers: Infinity War staked its claim to this title—the most ambitious crossover event in history took place. High art and baseball became intertwined in the form of a monumental photoshoot featuring a quintet of then-young shortstops (you know the one). One could argue that the shortstop position, photography and life itself were forever changed.
The 2021 shortstop free agency class did not venture into the waters of tasteful nude photography (the key word is tasteful, after all), but there was certainly a similar level of buzz surrounding the group.