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Day 96 of the Major League Baseball lockout in New York was the kind of March day that usually gets people itching a little more for Opening Day, thanks to temperatures sneaking into the 70s.

If you closed your eyes, you could envision yourself sitting at Yankee Stadium or Citi Field someday this spring, along with some 40,000 other fans. The warm weather might have also led you to turn on a Grapefruit League game — Yankees-Red Sox and Mets-Cardinals were originally on tap for Monday.

Instead, that eyes-closed version of baseball is about as close as it will get for the Yankees or Mets for what seems like the foreseeable future.