The best pictures from 2017 Spring Training photo day

Spring Training is here! That means baseball, thank the heavens, and the arrival of Spring in general. One does not ever need to train for Spring, because Spring is amazing, as things start growing again and stop being cold. It also means, this year, that MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA IS COMING OUT! If your gaming starts and ends with Pacman, just trust me that it's a cool thing.

I digress. Spring is new. It means baseball. But, just as importantly, it also means this year's batch of stock photos from photo day. Most of the photos look like variations of this:

That's Bubba Starling. His next Major League game will be his first. Look how excited he is. His face is turning into Billy Butler's before our very eyes and he doesn't even care.

Some pictures, however, do not look like that. Some pictures look much better. These are those pictures. Enjoy.

PHOTO CREDITS

Getty - Rob Tringali (dark grey backgrounds)

USA Today - Allan Henry (all others)

Lorenzo Cain, the smile factory

Cain, traditionally clean-shaven, is going with a short beard here. More importantly: HE IS SO MUCH SMILE. LOOK AT THAT. How can you not be happy when seeing that?

Aw, shucks.

Salvador Perez and the Existential Crisis

It looks like someone just told Perez about the Butterfly Effect, or spaghettification, or about the theory that we are all part of a simulation.

Perez is coming to grips with the unavoidable fact of life that we are nothing, we have always been nothing, and nobody ten thousand years from now will know or care about our existence or anything we have ever done. Life is a meaningless void.

Enjoy Arby's.

Alcides Escobar hasn't seen a baseball before

Escobar, before now, had a condition called 'blind balls', where he could not comprehend the true nature of baseballs or, indeed, any other spherical objects.

Now he can. Look at his wonder.

NED YOST

Ned Yost

Cain mic drop

God bless Lorenzo Cain, but a mic drop is an emphatic gesture, a roar of dominance and disregard for audio recording equipment, and a giddy smile smeared across your face undermines the whole point.

Eh, whatever. Cain smiles will solve the world's problems.

Uh

This picture could not possibly be more awkward. Brandon Moss looks like he's seen something that pleases him in uncomfortable ways, and the guys in the background are confused about the whole process. Then there's the ACE 30 patch.

Look, everything is awkward. Nothing to see here.

I am emote, LOL < 3

These guys look just like their emotes. What a world.

The guy on the right, for those of you who don't know, is either Jason Hammel or Luke Hochevar in disguise.

The hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs

Not every great Spring Training picture needs to be hilarious to be great.

Just think about Jack, for a minute. He's pitched for six Royals teams. He has yet to experience one winning season as a Royal. Last year sucked for him. This picture captures that darkness very well.

Behind the scenes

Nothing like a good behind the scenes photo to close it out. It all seems so silly from this angle.

Baseball itself is silly, though. Such is life.