At 1 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, we're back.
Chris Archer, still just 28 years old and looking to put the prior year's struggles behind him, will take the mound for the Rays and probably face the Yankees' Brett Gardner in Tampa Bay.
With that first pitch, Spring Training will become an immediate memory and the summer of 2017 might as well have begun.
Like any year, it'll feel at once weird and comfortable. This will be a year without David Ortiz, Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez or Vin Scully. The four pitches for an intentional walk will be replaced by a call from the dugout. Instant replays will mercifully cut off after two minutes.
But from there, a lot of the familiar beats remain. On Opening Night, the Cubs get to step on the field of their biggest rivals as defending champions for the first time in 108 years. And when they look across the diamond, they'll see their old center fielder, Dexter Fowler, smiling back in a red cap.
There will be more. It just might not be totally obvious yet, but there will be more changes, more rises and drops before the story of 2017 is totally written.
In 1984, the Red Sox began their first season since 1960 without Carl Yastrzemski. Before the end of the year, they had Roger Clemens on the mound and a new era was underway.
In 1995, the season started late thanks to a devastating strike. By the end of the year, Cal Ripken Jr. would break Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played and the Braves would win their first and, thus far, only World Series in Atlanta.
In 2001, the Seattle Mariners went into the year without Alex Rodriguez and were just a season removed from trading Ken Griffey Jr. But they welcomed Ichiro Suzuki into the fold and wound up winning 116 games. Sixteen years and 3,030 hits later, Ichiro is still wheeling around as the Miami Marlins fourth outfielder.
In 2008, Greg Maddux began his last season with the San Diego Padres before being traded back to finish out with the Los Angeles Dodgers. They finished first in the National League West, and Maddux handed the baton to a 20-year-old Clayton Kershaw.
The 2012 season began with Albert Pujols leaving the defending champion Cardinals for the Los Angeles Angels, but by September the talk of the team was Mike Trout nearly winning the Rookie of the Year and MVP trophies in his first full season.
This is such a small sample, a grab-bag of memories and moments from the past three decades, and if this column ran another 50 inches it could start in the 1870s and the beginning of the National League and progress forward through the decades, past Bob Feller and Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente and Dwight Evans and Tuffy Rhodes.
There are moments that become indelible. There are the ovations and the introductions and then, finally, the games, which start with Archer on the mound trying to win the first of his team's 162 games.
Every year, the game changes and it stays the same and it finds a new way to surprise us. But every year, one constant is that today is always a good day.