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A nation over-stimulated by the drama and heroics of the NCAA basketball tournament was granted relief Monday when Major League Baseball began its season with a flurry of slow-paced contests featuring mind-numbing gaps of inactivity.

Just in time, baseball’s opening day arrived Monday to remind fans that not every sport is crammed with gratuitously enthralling storylines, absurdly thrilling moments, and unreasonably short game lengths. Many in the U.S. even attended games yesterday to regain at least a semblance of sports boredom they feared might never return.

“It’s pretty good being at this game,” said temperate Detroit Tigers fan Tom Freese during Monday’s home opener at Comerica Park. “I think I’ll get a hot dog.”

“It’s great to be at the ballpark today and for the next 200 days,” said a somnolent Peter Gammons, an ESPN analyst who provided a much-needed reprieve for Americans from the energetic sportscasting methods of renegade personalities the likes of Bill Raftery and Jim Nantz.

“There’s a fly ball that has some distance to it,” whispered ESPN’s Jon Miller during a 12^th inning, three-run homerun by Xavier Nady of the Pittsburgh Pirates, returning the country to a serene, placidly appropriate reaction to game-changing plays.

For now, a nation of sports fans has been saved, as baseball again provides the placid solace of watching players step out of the batting box and engage in light conversation around the pitcher’s mound. America’s pastime once more entrances a country with its unique use of relief pitchers, hours-long rain delays, and the relaxing scenes of Kansas City losing.