Marc

Not every baseball inning starts with NOONEON - extra innings during the regular season now start with a runner on second base.

METOO was 2006?

ALFA is also a correct answer on its face - it's the proper spelling of the first word of the NATO alphabet.

I learned yesterday that Jingle Bells isn't actually a Christmas song - it was written about winter travel and never references Christmas in the lyrics. My mind was blown and I've been talking about it to anyone that will listen all day. Imagine my surprise to see this theme.

There's what I guess would be a Natick variant in the Southwest corner. I had EYED for 57A, which works as an answer and results in Down words that seem like they could be real names.

9D has "the" in both the clue and answer... that's supposed to be a no-no, right?