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It’s nice that a person doesn’t necessarily have to be good at something to enjoy it. If you’ve ever been to a karaoke bar, you’ve probably seen the absolute worst-case scenario when it comes to such a thing. My thing like that is baseball. I played when I was a kid, and I still look back on those days longingly, even though the only word that could describe my play was “unspectacular.” I practiced baseball every day, yet I still had the quickness and dexterity of a young Steven Hawking. I read about baseball every night, but it didn’t enable me to throw much more than 50 mph. I watched every game that was on TV, and still I never took to having the seams of a baseball embedded into my rib cage. Even now, I still love baseball; it’s just that now I love it a lot more when someone else is doing it.

This is why Opening Day has become my favorite holiday of the year. It’s probably not really considered a holiday, but it should be. Christmas takes what, about a month? You shop, wrap, talk about Jesus and Santa Claus, and it’s over. Easter? Hide a few eggs, see a bunny, picture Jesus on a cross, and you’re moving on. It’s basically about a day. Both are fine holidays, but the opening day of baseball offers so much more. Once it begins in early April, you’re celebrating until November. That’s seven months or so of celebrating. Fine, only one team really celebrates in the end, but baseball fans quickly learn the art of celebrating, because their team still has a slight chance of celebrating more at a later time. It doesn’t take much to make us happy.

I’m especially looking forward to Opening Day this year. The crappier the winter, the greater baseball season seems. If this is actually true, it should be one awesome year for baseball. I’ll take the day off of work this year, since Opening Day of baseball is still not recognized as an actual holiday — that sort of makes it better. I’ll get together with a few buddies, have a hot dog and a couple of beers, and begin settling in for the long haul. That’s what nice: even if your team loses on the first day, they still have 161 more opportunities throughout the summer to make up for it.

Eventually, it becomes like a soap opera. You have to tune in every day to see what’s going to happen. Heroes become villains, and vice versa. I can love a player enough to buy a shirt with his name on the back and then refer to him as “the stupid bastard who lost the game for us” all in the same week. I will yell at the TV, and I will punch the radio. I will call my dad three times a day to make sure he’s doing the same thing. He usually is, by the way. I may not necessarily be the most fun guy for some people to hang around with during baseball season, but that’s probably true all year around. There’s really no reason to blame it all on baseball.

This year has quite a lot of extra stuff to watch besides just the games. Steroids will once again be a concern. Mark McGwire, the ex-Cardinal slugger, is now the batting coach for his old team. He finally sucked it up and admitted he took steroids during his career. He said he was sorry, and now he’s back in the game. I don’t know what kind of strength program he has planned, but if the current players can manage to follow his very specific training regime, I fully expect St. Louis to have a team of terminators on the field every day. Sure, the clubhouse may be a little grumpy and a visible testicle may be harder to come by than a buffalo nickel, but we all must sacrifice for the game.

As far as I can tell in baseball, if you screw up, all you need to do is say you’re sorry. In fact, the baseball fans and writers seem to demand it. First the player must admit wrongdoing in as great a detail as he is capable of. This gives us something to talk about. He must then become emotional and say he is sorry. This gives us something to judge about. At this point, it appears to be over. A few of those fancier writers may question their motives and sincerity for a few days, but the rest of us will simply let it go. Honestly, I wish I could be more critical of the system, but deep down inside, I don’t even care that much. I care about the game far more than I care about the fellas playing it.

So, the beginning of the season is only a few short days away. For the rest of the summer, there will always be something on television. There will always be a reason to go out and have a couple of beers. There will be a reason to really analyze the sports page. If I’m not near a TV, I will listen to the radio. If there’s no radio, I will check game updates on my phone. I will become kind of a dickhead, and I will blame it on baseball. See, this game gives just as much as it gets, and I can’t wait to get started.