This year's opening day psych-up movie

Happy baseball opening day, everyone.

Two teams played two counting games in Japan last week, but now it's time for the other 28 to join them. One of the best days of the year, if you ask me. And you're reading this, so I guess you're asking me.

I do like to tie in opening day to the movies, and I've usually done that in the form of watching Major League, a task made easier by having purchased the film on iTunes. But given that I did watch it each of the past two years, I figured maybe it was a good time to switch things up this year -- at least for one year.

So, Moneyball it was.

This may not be the movie you'd first tap for this honor, at least on the surface. It's about the love of the game, as most baseball movies are, but that love is buried deep within number crunching and philosophies about how to maximize wins from a small payroll.

There is, though, the dramatization of a 20-game winning streak by the 2002 Oakland Athletics, and that's about as sports movie as it gets.

And truth be told, much of my excitement about baseball nowadays is inseparable from my various fantasy baseball interests. So crunching numbers and evaluating players purely on the basis of what they can do for you is certainly on message for that type of thing. (Just so you don't think I'm some kind of soulless baseball fan, I'll tell you that my burning desire for my team, the Boston Red Sox, to win the World Series has been quenched by them having done that four times successfully since 2004, including last year most recently.)

Anyway, I really enjoyed sinking into my beanbag chair with a couple beers and a bag of grain twists for my third viewing of a film that made my top ten of 2011. It scratched the itch and then some.

And in just a few short hours ... play ball.