Opening Day, even in its spread-out form that we have nowadays, is a joy because baseball is back and there are aces on the mound all over the place . 

The Marlins and Cardinals got us started in the early hours of Thursday morning, serving up a no-hitter bid for six full innings by the Cards’ Kyle Lohse.

Here are the seven games to enjoy today, with times in BST.

18.00. Boston at Detroit (Lester – Verlander) * BBC 5 Live Sports Extra and ESPN America

18.10. Atlanta at NY Mets (Hanson – Santana)

18.35. Philadelphia at Pittsburgh (Halladay – Bedard)

19.20. Washington at Chicago Cubs (Strasburg – Dempster)

20.05. Toronto at Cleveland (Romero – Masterson)

21.00. Miami at Cincinnati (Buehrle – Cueto)

00.05. LA Dodgers at San Diego (Kershaw – Volquez)

You can’t go wrong with a single one of those match-ups.

Maybe Toronto-Cleveland might be the game without a widely recognised well-known pitcher (Mark Buehrle probably counts as one even though he’s not at the level of a true ace), but Ricky Romero and Justin Masterson certainly should be better known and this season might be the one were they really grab hold of the attention of your average baseball fan.

On BBC 5 Live Sports Extra and at the BBC website, Nat Coombs and Josh Chetwynd will be presenting the action taking place at Comerica Park when Prince Fielder makes his debut for the Tigers against the Red Sox. That’s an intriguing story (surely odds-on that he goes deep) alongside reigning Cy Young and AL MVP Justin Verlander taking to the mound and Bobby Valentine managing Boston for the first time in a competitive game.

Every one of the above games deserves a mention, but if I had to quickly focus on one other it would be the game at Citi Field. It didn’t seem likely at all heading into Spring Training that Johan Santana would be ready to make Opening Day for the Mets and it’s great to see that he is.

MLB Opening Day + the Easter Bank Holiday weekend = lots of very happy baseball fans in the UK.