There's not much more I love in the world than the dawn of a new baseball season. There's a certain beauty to seeing everything reset to zero - wins, averages...everything.

Besides the on-field games, though, there's the off-field fun.

And the return of a new baseball season means the return of one of my favorite games - Beat The Streak.

It's a simple game - you pick a player each day. Your goal is to build a hitting streak - so if that player gets a hit, you pick someone to get a hit the next day. And so on...all season long. (Until late August - I usually stop playing when a 56-game hitting streak is no longer viable.)

Each of the past few years the game has gotten progressively better.

It started as a fantasy game on the mlb.com website. Then it became an app, which made it more convenient to play. Then it allowed you to 'double down', meaning you could pick two players a day if you wanted.

This year - and this is what makes it a New Thing - you can take a day off. Or an unintentional day, anyway. It used to be that if you skipped a day, your streak would be reset to 0. (To be honest, I feel like years ago this wasn't the case - but maybe with the addition of 'double down' they added this too. I don't remember.) Now, if you forget to submit a pick, you can pick up where you left off.

Another New Thing - it appears one of my favorite places (Dunkin' Donuts) has taken over sponsorship of the game. I think it used to be Scott's Lawn Care...Dunkin' taking over can't be anything but good for the game.

My longest streak ever, I think, was 12 games. My biggest problem these days is preventing myself from thinking making two picks a day isn't the easiest thing in the world. (I should have had a 2-game streak after the first two days of the season, but both days I pushed it and selected a second player...both of whom went hitless.)

I need to learn to pace myself.

Which I'll do. It's a long season.

But that's the beauty of the early part of the season. Because right now there's nothing leading me to believe that this won't be the year I build a 56-game hitting streak.