The good news is that opening day is mere hours away. The bad news is that it means the Royals and Rangers played their last Spring Training game at Surpirse stadium on Thursday.

The game was fairly interesting. John Buck and Hank Blalock homered. Milton Bradley hit a ball that hasn't come down yet and a bunch of guys fighting for final roster spots (Joey Gathright, Ryan Shealy, Kevin Mench, Marlon Byrd) had good games.

Spring Training baseball is an odd sort of thing. After months of heathen sports, there's nothing quite like the return of baseball to get your spirits up. But in many ways Spring Training baseball is, uncomfortably, not like real baseball. From watching the games, you'd think Joey Gathright and Mike Maroth were integral cogs in the 2008 Kansas City Royals machine. And that feeling never really goes away despite your understanding of that going into things. It's fun, it can be, at times, exciting, and getting to see lots of different players has its advantages.

But somehow things just seem to change dramatically when they start to count. Bradley's prodigious blast into the seldom seen corners of Surprise Stadium wasn't nearly as exciting to watch in person as Mark Ellis' season opening homer in Japan was to watch on TV. Part of it may be that Ellis' total now says (1) and Bradley's still says (0), but I think it goes deeper than that. Certain things change by amounts that would be imperceptible alone, but the cumulative effect is very noticeable. Every base runner brings a little more tension, every managerial move brings substantially more scrutiny and fans start checking the standings for the first time all spring. It's a little different here in Arizona, but, back in Chicago, it even smelled different on Opening Day.

As much as I enjoyed all the baseball this spring, I'm as ready as everyone else to get the 2008 Season going in earnest. The last couple of years I'd been very lukewarm about the sport, and it wasn't until the middle of last year before I started to care very much again. I forgot how much I missed opening day. The day on which I used to feign illness when I was a kid had not stirred the same kind of feelings in me recently. This year, however, I hear there's a nasty one day flu bug going around, and I'm afraid it might hit me Sunday night.