Baseball! All day, all the time...

I don't really regard yesterday as "Opening Day": not when only two out of the thirty teams in the majors are actually playing. Nice though it was to see - oh, look, the Cubs sucked - today feels much more like a day worth celebrating. The government should make Opening Day a national holiday and be done with it. There was a petition to this end last year, but the White House demurred in its response, saying " While we are sympathetic to your pitch to make Opening Day a national holiday, it's a little outside our strike zone: creating permanent federal holidays is traditionally the purview of Congress." No thanks, Obama! :)

Here's the schedule for today's games. Starts are Arizona times, and the ones marked in bold are being nationally-broadcast on ESPN.

• Blue Jays/Yankees - 10:05 AM
• Twins/Tigers - 10:08 AM
• Rockies/Brewers - 11:10 AM
• Red Sox/Phillies - 12:05 PM
• Orioles/Rays - 12:10 PM
• Mets/Nationals - 1:05 PM
• Braves/Marlins - 1:10 PM
• White Sox/Royals - 1:10 PM
• Angels/Mariners - 1:10 PM
• Pirates/Reds - 1:10 PM
• Padres/Dodgers - 1:10 PM
• Indians/Astros - 4:10 PM
• Rangers/Athletics - 7:05 PM
• Giants/D-backs - 7:10 PM

Of course, it all builds to the final game. We thrashed San Fran (I believe they hate it being called that) handily in spring training, but that means absolutely nothing. It would be great to shove that down the craw of ESPN: their "What to watch on Opening Day preview", which I'm not going to link, spent almost its entire duration brown-nosing Madison Bumgarner, and discarded Arizona with this, presented in its entirety: "Bonus: Well, you can't see Yasmany Tomas, because the expensive Cuban import will begin the season in Triple-A. Your 2015 Diamondbacks, everyone!" Wow, such insight and snark from the worldwide leader in sports. Guess Leith Kaw helped out.

Anyway.. Elsewhere in the division, the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw take on the new-look Padres and James Shields, in what might be the pitching match-up of the day, while the Rockies are.... Well, I'm sure they are probably playing somewhere, but I can't be bothered to look up any details. So feel free to use this thread as an impromptu GDT for the other 13 games on the day's schedule, and chat about those as well. We will be updating this stream all day, with line-up info, our game preview and I imagine the Gameday Thread might well go up a tad earlier than normal, since it's likely to be a packed house here. [Don't worry, we won't sell out.]

Or, alternatively, if you don't care about any other game, you could just stick with Fox Sports Arizona, who would appear to have you well-covered for the rest of the day...

Here's our #OpeningDay lineup: 14 1/2 consecutive hours of @Dbacks programming starting at 11:30. #OpeningDayFSAZ pic.twitter.com/o0pZpkze0h

— FOX Sports Arizona (@FOXSPORTSAZ) April 6, 2015

The long winter of staring out the window and waiting for spring is over. And today, that might be the best of things.