Major League Baseball opened its 2026 regular season on Thursday with all 30 clubs scheduled to play, sold-out crowds in most of the 15 host cities, and a leaguewide pregame ceremony honoring U.S. service members killed in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East — a somber overlay on what is traditionally one of the most exuberant days on the American sports calendar.

The defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers raised their banner at Dodger Stadium before a 1:10 p.m. Pacific first pitch against the San Francisco Giants, while the New York Yankees hosted the Tampa Bay Rays in the Bronx in front of a capacity crowd of 46,537. In Cincinnati, the Reds and Cardinals played the traditional first-pitch opener of the season at Great American Ball Park, with right-hander Hunter Greene throwing a 99-mph fastball past the Cardinals’ leadoff hitter at 4:12 p.m. local time.

Commissioner Rob Manfred, in a statement issued Wednesday night and read on every team’s broadcast before first pitch, called the day “a chance for our communities to gather, to remember those serving and those lost, and to share in something that has defined American springs for more than a century.” Each park observed a 30-second moment of silence after the national anthem; flags were flown at half-staff per a directive issued last week by the Trump administration covering federal facilities.

Security was visibly heightened around the league. The Department of Homeland Security had designated all 15 Opening Day games as Special Event Assessment Rating Level 2 events, one tier higher than a typical regular-season ballgame, and bag policies at several stadiums were tightened on short notice. Fans at Yankee Stadium, Citi Field and Nationals Park reported lines stretching more than a block from the gates by late morning. In Washington, where the Nationals hosted the Philadelphia Phillies, Metropolitan Police closed two blocks of South Capitol Street to vehicle traffic.

“We made the decision to err on the side of caution,” said Maureen Halpern, MLB’s senior vice president for security and ballpark operations. “There is no credible, specific threat to any of our venues. But we are mindful of the moment, and we’d rather have fans wait an extra ten minutes than have anyone wonder whether we took it seriously.”

Several clubs altered their traditional Opening Day programming. The Texas Rangers, playing in Arlington against the Seattle Mariners, replaced their scheduled military flyover with a recorded video tribute, citing a Pentagon advisory issued Tuesday that asked Air Force and Navy units to limit non-essential ceremonial sorties while operations in the Gulf continue. The Houston Astros, whose home opener against the Detroit Tigers is scheduled for Friday, will also forgo a flyover.

“We talked to the base, they talked to us, and everyone agreed this wasn’t the year,” said Astros president of business operations Reid McLain. “Our fans understand. The men and women who would’ve been in those jets are needed elsewhere.”

On the field, the day’s marquee matchup pitted the Atlanta Braves against the New York Mets at Truist Park, where Mets ace Kodai Senga and Braves right-hander Spencer Strider squared off in a rematch of last October’s National League Division Series. The Toronto Blue Jays opened at home against the Boston Red Sox in front of an announced crowd of 41,209 at Rogers Centre, the franchise’s first Opening Day under new manager Joe Espada, hired in November after Toronto’s late-season collapse.

The Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers, originally scheduled for a 1:20 p.m. start at Wrigley Field, were delayed an hour by rain and 41-degree temperatures. The Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks, opening at Coors Field, played through intermittent snow flurries, with attendance reported at 38,114, well below the venue’s 50,000-plus capacity.

For many fans, the day carried an emotional weight beyond the standings. Outside Camden Yards in Baltimore, where the Orioles hosted the Cleveland Guardians, a group of about 60 family members of deployed service personnel gathered for a pregame breakfast organized by the team’s community relations office. Several wore T-shirts bearing the names of relatives stationed in Bahrain, Qatar and aboard ships in the Arabian Sea.

“He texted me this morning, said he’d watch the highlights when he could,” said Allison Pruett, 34, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, whose husband is a Navy petty officer aboard a destroyer in the Fifth Fleet area of operations. “Baseball is what we do together. So I came. I brought our boys. We’re going to cheer.”

The Players Association, which has spent the offseason in friction with owners over service-time grievances, joined the league in a rare joint statement Thursday morning thanking fans and pledging a season-long fundraising partnership with three veterans’ charities. Union executive director Tony Clark said in the statement that players had agreed to wear a small ribbon patch on their caps through the end of April.

Television ratings were closely watched. Last year’s Opening Day drew an average of 4.1 million viewers across national and regional broadcasts, the highest figure since 2019. Industry analysts said early returns from ESPN and FOX appeared strong despite the unsettled news cycle, with ESPN’s Yankees-Rays broadcast drawing what the network described as its largest weekday afternoon audience in three years.

“People want a familiar rhythm right now,” said Mira Patel, a sports media analyst at Horizon Research in Boston. “Opening Day is the most reliable rhythm in American sports. There was a real question of whether the war would crowd it out of people’s minds. The early evidence is that it didn’t.”

By late afternoon, eight of the day’s 15 games had reached the seventh inning without incident, and MLB officials said the league would issue a final attendance and ratings tally Friday morning. The first weekend of the season runs through Sunday, with the league office indicating that pregame ceremonies honoring U.S. forces would continue through the home opener of each club.