Opening Day.

They are two of the greatest words in the baseball language. They tell us spring is here; five long, cold months are over; and that 3-for-4 day at the plate, or that three-hit shutout, finally counts.

Opening Day means we can skip school or work to be at the ballpark for a 2:05 p.m. start before a packed house. They assure us that box scores will be in our morning paper -- we've just completed The Last Worthless Evening That We'll Have To Spend.

Great, remarkable feats happen on Opening Day.

On Opening Day in 1974, Hank Aaron hit homer No. 714, tying Babe Ruth for No. 1 on the career list. On April 16, 1940, the Indians' Bob Feller no-hit the White Sox, 1-0. Feller remains the only pitcher ever to throw a no-hitter on Opening Day, and the White Sox remain the only team in history to have the exact same batting average for every player on the team at the end of a game as it did at the beginning.

Don Drysdale homered on Opening Day in 1959 and 1965, the only pitcher in history to homer on two Opening Days. In 1969 in Cincinnati, Drysdale became the only pitcher ever to allow home runs to the first two hitters (Pete Rose and Bobby Tolan) on his first two pitches of Opening Day.

Walter Johnson, the greatest pitcher ever, made 14 Opening Day starts (before seven presidents) and threw seven shutouts. His final one was his best: in 1926, at the age of 38, he beat the Philadelphia A's, 1-0, in 15 innings (15 innings on Opening Day!). In 1910, he should have thrown the first no-hitter ever on Opening Day except for a bizarre ground rule used only on that day. An overflow crowd in Washington was allowed to stand in a roped-off area and any ball hit into that area was called a ground-rule double. Sure enough, Home Run Baker hit a very catchable fly ball into that area, but it was scored a double -- the only hit off Johnson.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Frank Robinson has hit more Opening Day homers -- eight -- than any player in history. Ken Griffey Jr. is tied for second with seven, with Babe Ruth, Eddie Mathews and Willie Mays. On Opening Day 1975, Robinson's first game as the player/manager of the Cleveland Indians (and the first game with a black manager in major-league history), he had to be urged by general manager Phil Seghi to put himself in the lineup. So, he did: DH, hitting second. "[Yankees pitcher] Doc Medich got me 0-2, then threw a bastard slider that I barely fouled off," Robinson said 25 years later. "I thought, 'This sonofabitch is trying to strike me out on three pitches on my day. He's trying to embarrass me.'"

Two pitches later, Robinson hit a home run.

George Bell hit three home runs off Bret Saberhagen on Opening Day 1988, the first player ever to hit three homers on Opening Day. Six years later, Cubs center fielder Tuffy Rhodes, who had hit five homers in his career, hit three in three swings against the Mets' Dwight Gooden, who had allowed three homers in a game only three times in his 10-year career. Tuffy finished with eight homers that season, 13 for his career.

Opening Day sometimes marks major-league debuts for certain players, which makes it doubly exciting. In 1982, Rangers centerfielder George Wright went 3-for-5 on Opening Day in Cleveland, his debut. When asked if he had fun, Wright smiled and said, "I had a great time. I've never been to a major-league game before." First game he'd seen, he got three hits.

Opening Day one year wasn't as much fun for White Sox catcher Ron Karkovice, who, in 1996, became the only player in history to go 0-for-5 with five strikeouts on Opening Day. In 1990, the Astros' Glenn Davis became the only player ever to be hit by a pitch three times on Opening Day. And in 1998, Reds shortstop Pokey Reese made four errors (three in one inning), becoming only the second shortstop in major-league history to make four errors on Opening Day.

The 1989 Orioles were coming off a 107-loss season, a season that had begun with 21 consecutive defeats. They were facing Roger Clemens; a Boston columnist predicted Clemens would pitch the second no-hitter ever on Opening Day. Instead, Cal Ripken hit a neck-high fastball into the left-field seats for a three-run homer in the seventh inning, tying the score, 4-4. The Orioles won in the 10th on a sacrifice fly over a five-man infield. It was that game that broke a two-year, two-month curse of dreadful Orioles baseball. One game showed them they were for real. They adopted the slogan "Why Not?" and went to the final weekend of the season before being eliminated from the American League East race.

In 1901, in the first game ever played by the Tigers in Detroit, they trailed 13-4 entering the last of the ninth. They scored 10 runs, to win 14-13. They've played 100 years in Detroit, and that first home game in club history remains the largest ninth-inning comeback by a Tigers team.

So, when it's Opening Day for your team -- Sunday, Monday, Tuesday night, or the home opener sometime next week -- something great is bound to happen. But even if it doesn't, Opening Day can always stand on its own. Just being Opening Day is special enough.

Tim Kurkjian is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and a regular contributor to Baseball Tonight. E-mail tim.kurkjian@espnmag.com.