BASEBALL'S BACK!

New Yorkers need the national pastime now more than ever

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — We need this. Need it? Around New York, when it became apparent the chill wasn’t going to abandon our bones one second earlier than required, we’ve been circling this date, pining for it, counting down toward it, from the moments last autumn when baseball expired, abandoning us at the most inopportune time.

That was the most timeless thing Bart Giamatti was talking about all those years ago, after all, when he wrote about how baseball is built to break your heart. That’s the part that still reaches into your soul for a and the Braves at Citi Field on Monday. We need all 318 of the games that will follow in a way, this time, that maybe we’ve never needed them before.

Think about all that has transpired since the afternoon of Oct. 2, when Baltimore’s Zach Britton struck out Brett Gardner, ending a 5-2 Orioles win and closing out the Yankees’ schedule (a pitch that would, as it turned out, to the lasting regret of Maryland baseball fans everywhere, be the last pitch Britton threw all year, too).

Think about the echoing sadness that chased you out the door at Citi Field on the night of Oct. 5, when Madison Bumgarner coaxed a line drive off the bat of T.J. Rivera, ending a dominant four-hit, 119-pitch 3-0 victory for the Giants. Recall the abrupt silence that filled the yard maybe a half-hour earlier, when Conor Gillaspie drilled a three-run homer that sealed the Mets’ fate and slaughtered their season.

If you are a New York sports fan, think about all the losses you have witnessed in the weeks since then, blowout losses and heartbreaking losses, losses where your team didn’t show up and losses where you wish you hadn’t shown up.

The Nets and the Knicks have fallen in bunches, in bulk, the Jets losing so often you grew numb to it, the Giants winning just enough to keep your interest piqued, then pulling a no-show in Green Bay in the playoffs. If you are a hockey fan in New Jersey or Brooklyn, it has been a forgettable slog, and even as well as the Rangers have played, it sometimes feels like the