As baseball fans, we count the days until the pitchers and catchers report. The days until spring training officially begins. This year, we were lucky (in a sense) in that the Winter Olympics are able to bridge the gap between the Super Bowl and spring training proper. I mean, the biathlon is kind of like baseball, right? If you squint. And put a ton of schnapps in your cocoa.

Better than spring training (and for 93.3 percent of baseball teams' fanbases, better than the World Series) is that first month of the regular season. First, there's the endless griping of us and our ilk that hey, ESPN jerkfaces, baseball is back! Isn't that more important than NFL Combine news and NFL free agency news and NFL preseason news? (And the joke is on us, of course. Baseball is not more important to television viewers and -- more importantly -- television advertisers than the single most popular thing in America; plus, what the hell are we doing still watching ESPN in the year 2014? As baseball fans, we should have learned better by now.)

Between those complaints that you wish you didn't feel in your baseball lizard brain and the long stretch of summer when baseball is the ONLY sport happening and you really wish your football and basketball and hockey and college football and college basketball-fan friends wouldn't complain QUITE so loud (and maybe if they could appreciate your FanGraphs links you keep sending them and maybe if they could roll their eyes a bit less loudly when you talk about Wil Myers) ... between those two points, there is something every last baseball fan can get well and truly jazzed about: that glorious first month of the season.

It's the best month of the year. It's the month where all 30 teams are in it. Look at the standings from the first month of the last, I dunno, dozen seasons. Bonkers. There aren't many wire-to-wire winners these days, but those are boring, anyway. (Unless it's your team, of course. Then it's the BEST.) The first month of the season is for all of us. We gloriously-deluded fans. (And really, most baseball fans are deluded on some level. We've convinced ourselves that 162 three-hour games each year, plus the postseason, is a terrific idea.) (It totally is.) The Astros could reel off a 20-game win streak to start the season (but probably not). The Marlins could once again thumb their nose at everyone and their blow-up-the-team-in-favor-of-cheap-young-talent chutzpah could have them surging out of the gate, threatening to wrestle the NL East away from the Braves, Nationals, et al in the garish confines of their park you could have sworn was a dome because you only ever watched nighttime games before.

The point is, as much as you're not looking forward to the slew of columns with original headlines like "Are the Royals for real?" or "Are the Cubs for real?" or "Are the Mariners for real?" or "I Thought The Angels Weren't For Real. You'll Never Believe What Happened Next," that first, glorious, bonkers month of the season is when everyone falls back in love with baseball again. For good reason. Everything will be happening. Players you've never heard of will put up monstrous numbers. Teams you never suspected will play above their level and leave you grinning. And oh, there will be GIFs.

Before your team lets you down, before the June swoon, before you've had your heart broken and crushed into tiny pieces, before Roger Angell pops up in the postseason to capture the endlessly elegant poetry of our beautiful, pastoral game in a few lovely paragraphs, there will be that perfect first month. No matter which team (against your better judgment) completely owns your heart, you will be able to dream. But that's okay. We'll all be doing it.

Not all of your favorite baseball memories happened in October, you know. Here's to April. Let's hope it lasts forever.