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The wait is over. It’s officially baseball season. Pitchers and catchers have reported to Padres Spring Training.

They formally checked into the Peoria Sports Complex this weekend (though many of them were already working out there). If Super Bowl Sunday seems a bit early for report day, well … it is, and it isn’t.

Both the Padres and Dodgers opened their camp earlier than the rest of the league, because they'll also open their regular season earlier than the rest of the league -- with a two-game series March 20-21 in Seoul, South Korea.

That series -- and the understanding that the season will come quickly -- is coloring the team's start to camp.

"It's different, yeah," said new manager Mike Shildt. "But winners find solutions."

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Characteristically, Shildt was giddy as camp got underway, beginning his media session with an ear-to-ear smile and a rhetorical question for those in attendance:

"Is today not, like, one of the best days of the year?" he said. "Pitchers and catchers? It can't get a whole lot better than that."

Still, Shildt is facing quite a challenge in his first spring at the helm. He's tasked with a shorter-than-usual camp, followed by two games on the other side of the world.

"There's a lot of tentacles to these logistics," Shildt said. "Obviously, travel. The compactness of spring. ... So it's about efficiency, ultimately."

Indeed, Padres pitchers are already ahead of schedule -- at least compared with where they'd be if their season were beginning eight days later. Joe Musgrove is one of those pitchers, and he says he’s built up as though he's planning to start one of those two games against the Dodgers.

"That's been the plan since the start of the offseason, knowing that this was going to be a trip we were taking and we'd have a little less time in spring," Musgrove said. "You try not to speed things up, but you try to allow yourself a little more time on the front end to prep and build up. I feel good."

We all do. It's baseball season, after all.