It’s that time of year again, the time when we rescue our baseball gloves from the bottom of our closets and head outside to toss a ball around. We get to experience the grass getting greener, the days getting sunnier and Major League Baseball beginning its regular season.

This Monday we can turn on our televisions and watch a full slate of professional baseball games. The beginning of baseball is for me the official beginning of summer. It’s the time when ESPN turns basketballs into baseballs and buzzer-beaters into ninth-inning home runs.

A special place in my heart is reserved for Opening Day. Highlights galore, and fans aplenty, every team starts off with the same chances of reaching the playoffs. My hometown boys don their jerseys and hit the road for the first week of play, but believe me when I say I will be there when they return home. Traveling back to Milwaukee to watch the Brewers is best in these early-season series. The crowds are large, and the play is unpredictable — anything can happen.

Watching baseball is so much more of a sensory experience than sitting in an arena and watching a basketball game. On the way into the ballpark you can hear a saxophonist playing under the bridge from blocks away, the hustle and bustle of fans clamoring to get inside. You should find your seat without the help of an usher and sit down with a bag of peanuts and a Coke. Listen to the vendors’ as they hawk their products, taste the saltiness of a warm pretzel, watch as the game unfolds, smell the freshest hot dogs all season, and feel the soft leather against your palm as you wait for a foul ball.

March Madness will be giving way to April’s slower — yet exciting — nine innings of play. I am willing to sacrifice this year’s seemingly predictable tournament to watch the eventual World Series champions struggle to find wins. Major League Baseball has been anything but predictable in recent seasons, and this year will be no different.

My heart beats faster every time I see a commercial for the season ahead. Nothing is over-hyped. People who watch baseball are fans of the game. There’s no need to market games toward the masses of viewers who are watching only to see if they’ve won their office pools. Baseball is about the love of the game. It’s raw emotion with every pitch and intensity with every passing second.

It’s a travesty that this university doesn’t have an NCAA baseball team. It’s no fun not to be able to root for a team in the college World Series. Once again I return home to cheer for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Milwaukee is this state’s baseball center and the place where you will find me all summer.

This MLB season may be the year the Brewers make the playoffs for the first time in my lifetime. It may be the year when I catch a home-run ball with my bare hands. This baseball season will provide 81 chances for me to sit down, relax and forget all of my worries.

Baseball gives everyone the chance to enjoy what this country has always been about. Fans get to watch as hard work pays off. They get to see as dreams become realities. Each game is played as though it will impact the rest of the season, but terrible moments are put behind us in a week. The season is an ever-changing delight that fans can enjoy. You get chance after chance to see your favorite player, or favorite team. Baseball offers a weekend’s worth of fun rather than a single day’s intense experience.

Baseball is the greatest time of year, and it is the best experience on Earth. Baseball is life.