Happy New Year.

Buckle up.

I’ll have a Three Up, Three Down gamer after Eovaldi vs. Crochet, but I’ll be in the building for this one, so it will be tonight before that post drops. All good, I trust — today is a holiday on which baseball is intended to stretch from the morning alarm all the way until lights out.

And, today being what is, I’m sending this out again, like I did every Opening Day from April 1, 2011, the first morning of Rangers baseball that counted following the club’s first World Series and heading into what would be another World Series season, until March 29, 2018, when I left my solo space for The Athletic.

Now nestled happily back into that solo space, I dust off the following and take this slightly refurbished opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year, 2025 — when it’s not only a World Series season we would like to see duplicated.

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It’s your favorite author’s brand new book, just out of your mailbox and out of the corrugated box and out of the shrink-wrap.

It’s the last day of school, May 25, 1983, and Return of the Jedi opens as soon as the bell rings.

It’s anniversary reservations at that restaurant.

It’s a new season of Severance, a new Radiohead album, a cold beverage and some Chuy’s fresca by the pool with a bunch of friends.

It’s the first round, and your team is on the clock.

It’s the end of the previews, and lights dim even further.

It’s the end of the overture, and the curtains rise.

It’s Chuck Morgan’s voice and Eric Nadel’s voice and those smells.

It’s the home plate umpire’s brand new whisk-brush, unwrapped and put to use for the first time.

It’s a beltline of unfurled bunting, one of the two times each season — if things go right — that it’s broken out.

It’s the dream of Zero Things.

“You look forward to it, like a birthday party when you’re a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.”

Joe DiMaggio once said that about this day.

The Magic Number is 163. It’s a beautiful number.

There are no more sleeps to count off, only the aggravating crawl of the clock. Fight through it.

Here’s to the awesomeness of Page One.

And to what we hope is a bonus chapter, completing a very long book we don’t ever want to put down.