Spring is in the air, flowers are in bloom, and the weather is starting to warm up. For many people around the country, spring symbolizes something more, it signifies the return of America’s favorite pastime – baseball.

Opening Day marks the beginning of baseball season every year and has long been an American tradition. Adults will call in sick to work only to be healed just in time for the first pitch, while students beg their parents to stay home from school.

The question then arises, should Opening Day become a federal holiday?

In attempts to make Opening Day an official holiday, Budweiser has launched a petition drive, ad campaign, and signed on Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith as the official spokesman.

There is an online petition to the Obama administration on WhiteHouse.gov which requires 100,000 signatures by March, 26. More than 57,000 people have already showed their support by signing the petition and if it reaches the necessary amount, the White House will have to respond.

Opening Day may not seem like a big deal to those not interested baseball, but would anyone really mind having an extra day off? It would mean the world to those who truly love and appreciate the great sport of baseball.

As big as baseball is in Southern California, it is even bigger in other parts of the country. In St. Louis for example, where baseball is a way of life, Opening Day ranks right up there as one of the the happiest days of the year.

“People blow off work and kids miss school, and nobody blinks an eye at it,” Amanda St. Amand, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said.

According to Major League Baseball, more than 22 million people over the age of 21 have admitted to playing hooky in order to attend an Opening Day game. A recent poll by The Wall Street Journal revealed that 63 percent of people are in favor of creating the holiday while 37 percent are opposed.

There is clearly a large population of baseball supporters that would be in favor of creating a new federal holiday, but there are also several issues surrounding the idea.

Creating a federal holiday means shutting down the government for the day, and that results is the loss of federal revenue. The cost to the economy may be small, but nonetheless it still means that businesses, banks and markets would be closed that day.

This is why Congress is hesitant to create new federal holidays and why very few petitions actually make it through the process. Even holidays such as Thanksgiving and Martin Luther King Jr. Day received backlash and resistance to becoming official holidays.

“I don’t know exactly what the odds of success are,” Smith said. “With the Budweiser machine behind it, I’m sure that we’ll get the 100,000 signatures.”

While the online petition offers hope, the chances of Congress making Opening Day and actual holiday are very slim. Although baseball fans should not let that stop them from celebrating and treating this American tradition as their own unofficial holiday.