Maybe you’ve got an itch to finger the seams of a hardball, to punch the pocket of a glove.

Maybe you’ve been looking in the mirror, trying to decide whether, with your current haircut, your baseball cap looks best facing forward, like an I-mean-business fastball pitcher or backward, like a spunky let’s-go-team catcher.

Baseball season has arrived.

Spring training has wound down.

Opening night is April 5, with the Phillies hosting the Braves.

Opening day is April 6, with games coast to coast.

Baseball.

Think it again — baseball.

Probably just saying the word brings a smile, your lips curling up with the “ball.”

“I see great things in baseball. It’s our game — America’s game,” wrote Walt Whitman.

If you like to watch a quarterback throw a bomb, don’t you love to watch a left-fielder throw home to the plate?

If you like to watch a forward swoosh a three-pointer, don’t you love to watch a batter hit a dinger over the center field wall?

If you like to watch a soccer players trying to win the ball, don’t you love to watch a base-runner steal second?

Baseball.

The game has it all.

I know of a pitcher whose wind-up is similar to that of the bull in a bullfight and I know of a batter whose stance is not unlike a matador.

Baseball.

It’s a great game.

It’s our game.

And I think I’d like to see an openly gay big leaguer tip his hat to fans more than I’d like to see a gay or lesbian take the presidential oath of office.

I’ve always found inspiration in ballplayers. I’ve looked to the diamond for heroes, and I’ve found them. Some became heroes because of the game they played. Some became heroes because of the lives they led. Some became heroes for both their game and their lives.

“I want to be remembered as a ballplayer who gave all he had to give,” said Roberto Clemente, who is remembered just as he wanted.

I was thinking of Clemente the other day while driving through Bradenton, Fla., where the Pittsburgh Pirates train in March.

The team’s training facility is on Roberto Clemente Memorial Drive in honor of the late hall of famer. But when Clemente was in spring training in Florida, there were no roads named in memory of a ballplayer of color. Segregation still existed in Jim Crow Florida. Non-white teammates lived apart from white teammates and, on road trips, they sat on the bus while white teammates dined. Because of the color of his skin, Clemente could not gather with his white teammates in a local theater — miles from the current site of Roberto Clemente Memorial Drive — to watch a film premiere of their 1960 World Series victory.

Still, Clemente, whose first bat was made from a guava tree, played and gave all he had to give.

Baseball changed his life. He changed baseball. And the lives of so many fans — from Pittsburgh to Puerto Rico and over so many generations — were transformed.

When I think of Clemente, I think of a black-and-white Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photograph of him in the outfield, “Pirates” across his chest and the now-retired No. 21 below. He’s tipping his hat and wearing a look that is both serious and proud.

How proud I’d be to someday see an openly gay ballplayer tip his hat to the crowd, to see an openly gay ballplayer give all he had to give, to come out to the world and to come out on the field to play America’s game with courage and passion and pride.

Baseball.

“I see great things in baseball. It’s our game — America’s game.”