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.
Baseball seasons can meander like a long river. They can flow, bend, rise and fall with a subtlety that does not always make obvious a change of direction. Rare is the time when you can say with certainty “that day … that one day … is when it all changed.”
For Reds first baseman Joey Votto, such a rare day was Aug. 25, 2020. Votto batted four times that day in Milwaukee and struck out all four times.