Tomorrow, the Mets take the field against players in opposing uniforms for the first time this year, and few outside of Port St. Lucie will care. It’s merely an exhibition with some college kids, and the Mets will feature at least two pitchers I’d never heard of before a few days ago (apparently Nate Field is a 32-year-old who spent a couple seasons in the Royals bullpen and has a career ERA over 5, and Ryan Cullen is a 28-year-old who has spent eight years working his way from rookie ball to AAA—he actually pitched well in relief for New Orleans last season). But then there’s Friday. Ohhhhh, Friday. Friday will feature the first game we New Yorkers actually get to see (1 p.m., SNY), and it will feature the Mets debut of starting pitcher Johan Santana.

This will be the most anticipated spring training game in Mets history. There, I said it. I don’t mean that it’s a must-win spring training game, or even that I will care who wins the game. The days of important exhibition games died with the Mayor’s Trophy, and the beginning of interleague play and the regular season rivalry with the Yankees—though I still remember gloating to Yankee-fan friends over an 11-0 Mets spring training victory in the early nineties (if anybody finds a date for that, you’re my hero). I mean that I’m looking forward to this spring training game as I’ve looked forward to no other.

First and most obviously, Santana, the biggest offseason acquisition in Mets history, takes the mound. Never before has there been so much hype around seeing a player in a Mets uniform. I’m sure people were excited back in 1966 when the Mets won the Tom Seaver lottery, and I know people were excited when the Mets signed Bobby Bonilla and paid him (what was then) a ton of money, and of course we can all still remember the Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez celebrations. But Seaver was just a college pitcher, and though the other three were elite players, none of them could’ve be considered the best in the game at the time we got them. In Santana, the Mets have the best pitcher in the game, at his prime—or at least, that’s what everyone (including me) seems to think. We get to see him on Friday.

Second, this is a sorry time of year for sports, made even sorrier because the NCAA hoops schedule is running really late this year. We should be getting ready for conference tournaments this Saturday March 1. Instead, we have another entire week of regular season still to go. The major conference tournaments don’t start until March 12, and the NCAA tournament doesn’t start until March Freaking Twentieth. With nothing else to focus on, I’m certainly more excited than I ordinarily would be to watch the orange and blue on Friday.

Finally, this is our chance to lose The Collapse once and for all. The last time any of us watched a Mets game was on that fateful Sunday, when by 1:30 p.m. the big decision became whether to go somewhere to catch the Phillies game, or to stick it out with the likes of Jeff Conine, Jorge Sosa, and Sandy Alomar Jr. In the end, of course, it didn’t matter which game we watched. We all found out the result. On Friday, we get to see something completely different.

It’s time to enjoy baseball again. It’s time to watch what might be the best Mets team of the last 20 years. It’s time for us to see this new pitcher we’ve been hearing so much about. This Friday, it’s time to get started.