Memorial Day has come and gone, which traditionally has meant the start of the "real" Major League Baseball season.
School is out, so parents can take the family to a night game without having to worry about keeping the kiddies up late. Football hasn't started yet and, alas, hockey is over - at least here.
It's the time when attendance should start picking up at many of the stadiums across the land.
Unfortunately, we know better about that, don't we?
The good news is, the Tampa Bay Rays may be about to break their six-year streak of finishing last among MLB's 30 teams in attracting paying customers. After 24 home dates this year, the Rays rank 29th : well ahead of Miami, though.
It makes you wonder if Evan Longoria's recent assessment that the Rays might be better off moving out of the area was uncomfortably close to being accurate. Pundits certainly took it as validation that baseball is a flop in Florida, and always will be.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE Evan Longoria says Rays might be better off leaving
His remarks a few weeks ago to Tampa Bay Times baseball writer Marc Topkin were picked up by ESPN, CBS, and major local outlets from Boston to Chicago to Los Angeles.
"Honestly, and this is maybe not something I should say, but my gut tells me that the best decision might be to move the team,'' Longoria said in that interview.
I've heard those same basic words before, oh wait ... when was it?
Maybe it was back in the 1980s, when the consensus was that the Minnesota Twins had to move to Tampa, land of opportunity, because baseball couldn't make it in Minneapolis.
Or it might have been when the Chicago White Sox were ready to pack and leave for St. Petersburg because no team could be successful in that city playing second fiddle to the Cubs.
Maybe it was when former Seattle Mariners owner Jeff Smulyan was desperate to leave for St. Pete because he couldn't make it work in the great Northwest.
When this area was desperate to attract a team, the same thing kept playing on a perpetual loop: Baseball can't make it in Oakland, Dallas (really, Dallas?), and, oh yes, San Francisco, the city where Longoria now plays.
RELATED COVERAGE Move to Ybor City would put team in heart of population
It was all a big game, of course, to get new stadiums in those cities. It worked.
I believe it will work here, too.
It is true that most people in this little slice of paradise we call home apparently have had higher priorities than going to Tropicana Field. It has been that way since not long after the then-Devil Rays began play in 1998.
But opportunity comes from seeing what can be, and not always focusing on problems in the present.
To me, location has always been the biggest reason the Rays have been a box office flop. My friends in St. Petersburg don't like hearing that, but as numerous studies have confirmed - and the Times' Christopher O'Donnell reported recently - it's just a numbers game.
About 615,000 people live within a half-hour drive of the Trop. That number doubles with a new stadium in Ybor City. And with South Hillsborough growing incredibly fast, that potential fan pool will increase.
Corporate season tickets and suite sales are vital for baseball teams. There simply are more big buildings in Tampa, and that should mean higher sales.
The giant Mosaic Co. is moving its corporate headquarters from a Minneapolis suburb to somewhere in Hillsborough County. That's the first Fortune 500 company to move its headquarters here, and if planners have their way it won't the last.
Commentators aren't saying anything about Tampa Bay and its future in baseball that wasn't being said about those other cities with struggling teams.
Rays fans can take heart in that. There is reason to hope better times could be coming.