The force.

I think the science is that the days start, little by little, to get longer on December 22 each year. A little more light, each day.

It felt that way Tuesday night. The weather, and just about everything else, couldn’t have been better.

We packed in about 325 people at the really cool Bedford Ice House for the Newberg Report Book Release Party, and you guys donated hundreds of toys to help make sure lots of kids had better holidays than they would have otherwise.

Jeff Banister, Eric Nadel, Darren Oliver, Robinson Chirinos, Sam Freeman, and Josue Perez signed autographs and answered fan Q&A and posed for photos — Banny also formed a brand new Rangers cap at my request (scroll down through this stack of Marty Yawnick’s photos from the event to watch the video) — and it was a great night of baseball.

All those guys sacrificed family time to be with a few hundred hungry Rangers fans. The energy was incredible. Baseball can’t get here soon enough.

Jared Sandler and then Ben and Skin helped run things, Steve Richardson and his staff took care of everyone, Dawn Shepard and Billie Jo Davis classed up the joint, and this dramatic reenactment happened:

Thanks for everyone who came out to the party. Most of all, I want to thank Banny, Eric, Ollie, Robinson, Sam, and Josue, because the grind those guys go through — in large part for us — for eight or nine months every year leaves very little time to decompress, to reconnect with family and build on that part of their lives before the grind gets set to start up all over again. I think that’s probably lost on lost of folks. It’s no longer lost on me.

I’m super-grateful to those guys. They made a cool night really come together.

Now, I’m about to ruin today’s entry, because I walked out of a movie theater about 12 hours ago and can’t help myself.

No spoilers, I promise.

This is going to be terrible, but here we go.

Episodes one through three of the Star Wars franchise were the equivalent, maybe, of the Rangers’ first-ever taste of playoff baseball, when the club was mauled by the Yankees three times but still reached new territory. October 1996 (Juando: Rise of Vader), 1998, and 1999 = May 1999, 2002, and 2005. Yeah?

(This works better if you pretend for a minute that Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith were actually released first, just as they fall in the story.)

(Actually, it probably still doesn’t work.)

Maybe Episodes four through six line up with the 2010 World Series season (1977’s breakthrough A New Hope), the 2011 World Series season (1980’s awesome The Empire Strikes Back), and the extraordinary 2015 Rangers season (1983’s Return of the Jedi), which may not have soared the way 2010 and 2011 did but which was still a phenomenal experience . . . leaving us fired up, wanting more.

We saw Episode VII: The Force Awakens last night.

There’s a World Series parade ahead, one year soon, that will complete this analogy. That film was awesome.

Awesome.

The Star Wars portion of this report wasn’t awesome, but I ruined a “Mad Men” episode a few years ago by actually commenting on specifics, so I won’t make that mistake again.

(I just made a different mistake, by not deleting the last eight paragraphs.)

Thanks to all those who came out to Bedford Ice House on Tuesday. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

Seriously: Happy New Year.

[Nick Pants]