Opening day brings memories of a great friend to baseball

It is opening day, which makes it one more day to miss Mel Antonen, our baseball savant from South Dakota.

Every year, I could count on an email from Mel at the moment of the baseball season’s first pitch. It always said the same thing:

“When is this season ever going to end?”

The only thing Mel enjoyed more than a good joke was telling the same one over and over. Some years I would try to send a first-pitch email to him before he could send one to me, but I never could beat him to the punchline. He would be off in some big-league press box — often at the ballpark where that first pitch was thrown — and I could almost hear his high-pitched laugh echo across the continent.

Mel died on January 30 of a rare autoimmune disease and complications from COVID-19. He was 64 years old, and still a kid at heart. He spent his professional career covering grown men playing a child’s game, and never forgot how lucky he was to do it.

Mel worked at USA TODAY for 24 years. That’s where I got to know him. Later he was a baseball analyst for the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, the cable channel that broadcasts Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles games. His transition to TV was seamless. It’s not an easy change for those who come from print, but Mel was comfortable talking baseball anywhere — on TV for MASN, on radio for Sirius XM, or at the church social hall after services.

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