Everybody has a favorite baseball quote. Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel were almost supernaturally skilled at coming up with them. Some of them are funny (I’m fond of Tom Trebelhorn’s forever underappreciated, “Running a ball club is like raising kids who fall out of trees”), some of them are motivational (Brooks Robinson’s “If you’re not practicing, somebody else is, somewhere, and he’ll be ready to take your job”), and some of them I honestly believe can make you a better person (Earl Weaver’s “I became an optimist when I discovered that I wasn’t going to win any more games by being anything else”).

But my favorite baseball quote is a classic one, from Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, one I think about every day as Opening Day approaches: “People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

The thing about baseball is that it’s always happening. We all love baseball -- that’s why we are here, after all, why I am typing this and why you are reading it -- and everything that comes with it. The crack of the bat, the pop of the glove, the roar of the crowd, the smell of the grass, all parts of our lives that are just the same now as they were when we were children in a way that almost nothing else is.

But the key to baseball is that it happens every day. Thursday is Opening Day and every team will play, which means half of them will lose. If your team loses, though, don’t fret. They will play again tomorrow or the next day, and then the next day and nearly every day after that for more than six months. Starting on March 30 until the beginning of November, baseball will be a constant in your life. And that’s important.

Who knows where you’re going to be in April? Or June? Or September? Your life could be the same as it is now. It could be dramatically different. But there is one thing you do know: There will be baseball. If you are happy that day or sad that day, if you want to embrace the glories of life that day or have some brief escape from the pain it can provide that day, baseball will be there for you. You will watch a game with a loved one, with your family, with an old friend, with a work colleague, or by yourself alongside 40,000 strangers who, in a moment, can become your closest pals. That’s what baseball is and what it does and why it is so resilient as a metaphor for life itself: It happens. Some days you win. Some days you lose. You still have to get out of bed and go get ‘em again tomorrow.

There are many indications that this season will be unlike any we have seen before. The infield shift as we know it is gone. The bases are bigger. There’s a pitch timer (you may have heard about the pitch timer a few times in Spring Training). These things may be jarring at first but, likely, only briefly. The players have mostly already adjusted during Spring Training. In fact, they've been almost universally supportive of the changes and have settled back into their natural rhythms. We will all get used to it and likely used to it quicker than we expected. Because it’s still baseball. It's just the same game it always has been. Players might get bigger, faster, and stronger. Strategies may alter and evolve. Uniforms and stadiums change and occasionally the bases will grow a little bit. But it’s still baseball. It’s still the same. And it’s still there, every day.

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And what a show it is! If you weren’t convinced that Shohei Ohtani was the greatest show on Earth before the World Baseball Classic -- and you should have been at least close to convinced of this already -- you certainly are now. Thanks to the extra Wild Card spots that were introduced last year -- spots that led to a riveting Wild Card round and will do so again this year -- more teams than ever believe they’re World Series contenders this very second … and aren’t wrong to think so. The amount of young talent in the game, from all across the globe, is downright staggering, and (as we saw in the Classic) these players are expressing their joy at playing this game in a way that is intoxicating and contagious.

A guy hit 62 homers last year. On any given night, you can watch Mookie Betts in Los Angeles, Justin Verlander in New York, Nolan Arenado in St. Louis, Mike Trout in Anaheim, Yordan Alvarez in Houston and so many stars in San Diego you won’t be able to turn away for so much as a second. And so much more talent is coming. Two of MLB’s most storied franchises -- the Yankees and the Cardinals -- will have two of the top five prospects in baseball debut on Opening Day. On Thursday, you can tune in and watch their dreams come true, live, and in real time.

And it won’t stop until November. That’s what baseball does: It happens. It has been away since that night in Houston when the Astros won their second World Series in five years. But now it’s back.

It will happen today, tomorrow, the day after, and so many tomorrows after that. You don’t have to ration it. You don’t have to modulate yourself. You don’t have to be cautious. You can take it all in huge gulps. And then you can do it again tomorrow.

The winter is over. You don’t have to stare out the window any longer.

Baseball is back.