For the past two years, we all -- in these pages, in our conversations with friends, in our inner monologues and in our efforts to keep putting one foot in front of the other -- have been seeking some version of normal. Or maybe it’s better to say that we’ve been trying to adapt our situations, however dire or lucky or in between, to make sense in a world reimagined.

This Opening Day, the Yankees won a baseball game. That’s pretty normal, wouldn’t you say? The Yankees win quite a bit, after all, and we’re not too shy to mention it from time to time.

The Yankees won a walk-off, extra-inning Opening Day game. That’s … less normal, unless you have especially vivid memories of the dawn of the 1908 baseball season.

Put it all together, and you have planet Earth in 2022, as we creep back toward the lives we remember, still girded to protect against new surprises around hot corners.

“Normal is good,” says pitcher Michael King. “And relative.”

Opening Day always highlights the excitement inherent in that which will quickly become ordinary. As every player will tell you, it’s one game out of 162, and while that’s objectively true, it also doesn’t really apply until the next day, when the long grind of all-but-daily games through spring, summer and the beginning of fall will become our entire reality. “This first one means a little bit more,” says Joey Gallo, riffing on an archetypal baseball quote. “It’s just a start of a journey for us. But it’s exciting. It’s been a long, longer-than-normal offseason.”

To be sure, we’ve been trying to isolate the reintroduction of “normal” since the long-delayed Opening Day in July of 2020. This year, despite an entirely different hiccup, it feels closer than ever.

***

Gallo arrived in New York two-thirds of the way through the 2021 season, so he has already spent plenty of time in the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, but that doesn’t mean the 2022 opener didn’t offer some surprises. Although Spring Training had prepared the players for the new normal -- which was, really, the old normal -- the outfielder still found it jarring when media members starting filing into the Yankees’ clubhouse a few hours before first pitch.

Clubhouse interviews have long been a fact of life for big leaguers, but all media interaction shifted to Zoom during the pandemic. For Gallo, who was used to a much smaller media contingent in Texas during his baseball life in the before times, finding 30 onlookers standing around him as he dressed was surprising, but actually not a negative.

“I kind of forgot,” he says, laughing. “But it’s cool. It’s a lot more upbeat and a lot more things are going on in the clubhouse than last year. So, I don’t mind it.” In particular, the affable Gold Glover pointed out the same thing many of his teammates had identified: While no one wants a recorder in his face after a bad outing or a rough week, the chance to talk face to face, rather than staring into a television monitor of Zoom thumbnails, injects a level of humanity into the daily interaction between reporter and player, and that, in turn, can help shape fans’ perceptions.

“I think when they get to know you a little more, your personality, it’s easier to understand the player. I think last year was tough, especially for me. No one really knew me at all. I just came over and played, and you just saw what you saw while I was hitting and whenever the camera was on me. Fans, they didn’t really get to see me outside of the white lines or whatnot. So I think it’s important. I think you start to get a human element of it. Like, ‘Oh wow, this guy cares a little more than I thought he did,’ and stuff like that. I think you get to know the writers’ personalities, and then the writers get to know your personality. And I think it’s better that way.”

Or, as pitcher Jordan Montgomery puts it, “Zoom was just weird. I know it wasn’t good for y’all either.”

Different players had different day one experiences. Isiah Kiner-Falefa handled all comers one-on-one, juggling introductions with writers looking to meet the new shortstop. Game 2 starter Luis Severino engaged with a small scrum in front of his stall, while Aaron Judge got boxed in by a media contingent 28 strong. And the novelty wasn’t simply for the players; Max Goodman has been covering the Yankees for Sports Illustrated since November of 2019; Opening Day 2022 was his first time in the Bronx clubhouse.

It might seem self-indulgent to focus so much on the media experience of covering baseball in 2022 -- and, hey, you’re not wrong to think that — but the newfound freedom is visible outside the clubhouse, as well. Players are now more comfortable signing autographs for and interacting with fans, and parts of the general ballpark experience -- whether the military veteran the team honors on the field every game or the celebrity guests singing anthems and throwing first pitches -- are back as well.

“You just feel like the human interaction and human element is back, whether it’s with the media or with other players or with fans,” says reliever Clay Holmes. “There’s just that human element that surrounds the game that makes it so great. It feels normal. And that’s back.”

This year marked Gerrit Cole’s third Opening Day start for the Yankees, but other than the team’s record going into the day, the experiences couldn’t have been more different. In 2020, on the road in Washington, the Yankees’ new ace pitched to an empty stadium window-dressed with piped-in sound. Last year, while the team was thrilled to welcome fans back, the capacity restrictions for health and safety reasons meant that the Stadium was about a quarter full.

It was enough to make the star pitcher look to another era entirely as a comp for the atmosphere he would enjoy on Opening Day 2022.

“The last experience I had was opposing our team in 2019 with the type of environment I think we all love to see here in Yankee Stadium,” said Cole, who twirled seven scoreless innings for Houston in Game 3 of the 2019 ALCS in front of 48,998 fans in the Bronx. “So, I’m very much looking forward to it.”

Cole stopped by the ballpark the day before the scheduled opener and was relieved to see what might have been an afterthought: the couches had returned to the clubhouse. The message was clear: The players were once again permitted -- encouraged even -- to hang around. “The mass breakfast spread’s out,” he said. “Couches are back. Human beings are here.”

Part of the reason that baseball players spend so much of their day around the ballpark is that the time breeds familiarity. Double-play partners need to be able to read one another’s briefest motions, batterymates need to get on a single wavelength, and, generally speaking, comfortable players play better. For King, the first noticeable change came during Spring Training, when the pitching staff met in a much smaller room than it would have the previous two years. And Kiner-Falefa acknowledged that after his Spring Training trade from Minnesota -- which, itself, came a day after a trade from Texas -- it took him a few days to acclimate to the new team. But what helped was the fact that he went to dinner in Tampa with some new teammates, a luxury that wasn’t always an option during the worst days of the pandemic.

“Just having that dinner allowed me to feel a lot more comfortable in the clubhouse,” explains Kiner-Falefa, whose Opening Day experience also included his first “Roll Call” from the Bleacher Creatures, which was delightfully reminiscent of the times he, himself, had sat out in right field as a youngster and chanted for players such as Derek Jeter. “You know, we’re walking around a clubhouse that has some big boys. You don’t ever want to have that feeling of walking on eggshells, but having that interaction, hanging out with guys, going to team dinners, it’s felt good.”

Kiner-Falefa wasn’t the only new face on the left side of the Yankees’ infield. He arrived in a trade with former AL MVP Josh Donaldson, who started at third base and batted leadoff on Opening Day. Indeed, it was Donaldson who cracked the 11th-inning walk-off hit that scored, naturally, Kiner-Falefa. For the veteran Donaldson, stepping up in a huge spot for a new team was certainly welcome, especially to begin a season-opening homestand against the Red Sox and Blue Jays, two of the Yankees’ biggest division rivals. The season opener marked the 78th time Donaldson faced the Red Sox, including during seasons as a member of the Blue Jays, but it was his first time doing so in pinstripes. “As a player,” Donaldson says, “you try to stay out of that as much as possible. That’s why you hear, ‘It’s just another game.’ That’s how you want to approach it. But sometimes it doesn’t become just another game because of the intensity from the crowd itself.”

***

All told, we’re still waiting for a truly normal year. Spring Training was cut to just three and a half weeks due to the lockout, and Opening Day was pushed back a week. When gameday finally beckoned, rain had other plans. The Yankees and Red Sox didn’t even wait for April 7 to take a chance on the weather; the game wisely was postponed nearly 30 hours in advance.

Time will tell what impact the rushed timeline in Tampa, Fla., has on the 2022 season, but that couldn’t have mattered less to the 46,097 fans -- a sellout, of course -- who packed Yankee Stadium on April 8 for Opening Day (observed). Rather than worry too much about the negatives, manager Aaron Boone looked to the ways that the crunched schedule might have forced players to heed the call of the factory whistle in Tampa and get down to business. “Maybe the calendar forced them to be a little more focused and intense right away,” Boone said, “because it was like, We don’t have a lot of ramp-up time here. There’s not a lot of easing into it.”

What the manager sees is a close-knit group that’s ready to embrace all that 2022 can become, not least a much-awaited “regular” regular season. As he offered his usual odes to the romance of Opening Day, and the need to embrace all the feelings that come with it, Boone also looked into the faces of the reporters in the Yankee Stadium press conference room and addressed what they, themselves, might notice in the clubhouse now that they’re allowed back in. “I love the bond that’s going on in that room right now,” Boone said. “I do feel like there’s a closeness with the group right now that I like.”

He said that hours before a topsy-turvy win that had all the roller-coaster discomfort -- and relief -- of … well, everything around us. There was the giant American flag in center field, as always, but there was also the smaller, but no less significant, flag of Ukraine flying next to the Stars and Stripes in left field throughout the game, and the Ukrainian anthem -- sung by 11-year-old Yulia Holiyat of the Ukrainian Children’s Choir “Moloda Dumka” -- began the celebratory day on a somber note of solidarity.

Then, after the ceremony concluded, a baseball game broke out. The Yankees trailed early, then roared back on home runs from Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu and Giancarlo Stanton, whose blast continued a run of dominance against Boston that began last season. A stout bullpen held Boston in check, allowing Donaldson the chance to close out the long-awaited opener in extra innings. And as Frank Sinatra began to sing, all you could think was how lucky we all were to have 161 more to go. And what could be more normal than that?

“Compared to years previous, for sure. I wouldn’t say completely, but I think we’re obviously [headed] in the right direction,” Stanton said. “So, yeah, it does feel as normal as it’s been in the past few years, that’s for sure.”