The ocean will be a little bit calmer. Its waves will crash into the cliffs and draw should-be-class-goers out to the beach armed with a cooler in one hand and a tattered old football in the other. Boardshorts and sundresses will be frequent; going to class and waking up early will be far less frequent.

That’s right, it’s springtime.

Us Santa Barbarians posses a certain knack for getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. The beer flows like water on Thursday nights; the last Thursday class is the same as if some Cal Polyan exited an engineering course late on a Friday afternoon eager to start the weekend. We like to start everything a little bit early. That’s why springtime acts as a predecessor to summer. It’s a time when we do little and remember even less.

If sport is human life in microcosm, opening day is springtime in microcosm.

Somewhere today around one o’clock in Buchanan Hall, Professor Choi will be lecturing about the history of television. Likely, there will be quite a few laughs during his entertaining lecture, students will take tenacious notes, and perhaps a few Giants and Dodgers fans will be sending out text messages to their roommates for opening day updates. The best part, however, is that there will be a vacant lecture seat where I usually plant my behind.

Instead, I’ll be in San Francisco, watching baseball in its purist form: opening day.

I’ll be with 40,000 other men, women, girls, boys, students and babies, all of who probably had some other commitment. Businessmen will make up worthless excuses to escape from meetings and take in everything that baseball has to offer. Teachers will call in sick just to hear the sounds of maple bats punishing baseballs. Poor college students like myself will skip classes and work alike, and foot the bill for an opening day ticket that gobbled up a week’s worth of pay. Baseball reflects everything that is so great about Spring Quarter.

With the conclusion of March Madness last night, the bitter taste of Winter Quarter madness, in a literal sense, will be over. It’s baseball season. Kick back and sip a cold beer in the sun, eat a giant hot dog that will make your breath reek of jalape