April 2008 Archives

It's taken me this long to absorb, as much as possible, the aftermath of Tuesday night's live "Costas Now" show on HBO, particularily the bug-eyed confrontation that took place on a segment about sports and the Internet. Award-winning writer Buzz Bissinger definitely had a bee in his bonnet, and took full advantage of the network's philosophy that swearing is OK to try to rip a new one out of Deadspin.com creator and editor Will Leitch.

Backlash ensued.

As expected, response on Deadspin.com all day today has been in Leitch's defense.
Nonetheless, Bizzinger, when calmed down by Costas, did make some valid points that were buried beneath this creepy sense of snap hormonal outrage that seemed to have been boiling up to where the studio audience didn't know whether to laugh or run for the exits in fear that the gorilla would snap loose from his chains.

A clip of the 18-minute segment in question, from the 90-plus minutes show, was posted this afternoon on Deadspin.com. It had about 15,000 views in just a couple of hours, and more than 200 comments, plus a Bizzinger reference already on his Wikipedia page. As one response said:

"This isn't just "Bissinger vs. Leitch". This is "Bissinger vs. Leitch, Deadspin, blogs, wireless internet, PDAs, synthetic motor oil, the space shuttle program, electric typewriters, the four-slot toaster, automatic transmission, and the rise of pharmaceuticals".

Funny, and maybe playing right into Bissinger's point.

By Joedy McCreary
AP Sports Writer

DURHAM, N.C. -- Ron Shelton says he's just now realizing what a home run he hit with "Bull Durham."

Two decades have passed since the release of the movie Shelton wrote and directed about an aging minor league catcher, a hotshot pitching prospect and the groupie wooed by both that has been praised as one of the top sports movies of all time.

"It's just dawning on me now, really," Shelton said Wednesday. "We realized when we started testing that the audiences responded to it. It never scored through the roof when it scored; it sort of got these OK numbers.

"But when it opened and these reviews came in that my mother couldn't have written. ... In the second week, it stayed and it stayed and it just ran all summer. It was a gradual recognition that maybe we captured lightning in a bottle here, (but) there was no moment of epiphany."

Shelton joined producer and Durham native Thom Mount at a luncheon marking the 20th anniversary of the film that captures a season with a fictitious version of the Durham Bulls, then of the Class A Carolina League.

In his first mound performance for the St. Paul Saints in nine years, Jon Secrist was dancing.
Tuesday night, in an exhibition game against the Ibaraki Golden Golds, the 53-year-old knuckleball specalist from Westlake Village, trying to reclaim the title as the oldest pro baseball player in the country, gave up one hit, one walk, struck out two and allowed one earned run in two innings in the Saints' 3-2 loss before 1,923 at Midway Stadium.
It wasn't going to be easy for Secrist, given a chance for a do-over by team by co-owner Mike Veeck after a failed attempt in 1999. Coming in relief to start the fourth inning with the Saints trailing 2-1, Secrist had to stare down at the first batter -- a 4-foot-7 female, Ayumi Kataoka. -- who appears to be a legit player.
Apparently, Veeck's motto that "Fun is Good" has been translated worldwide. The Golden Golds are owned by a Japanese comedian who believes in the Veeck philosophy of promotions, gamesmanship (and their version of Eddie Gaedel).
Secrist walked Kataoka, naturally. She eventually stole second and scored on a two-out double by Kenta Sasaki. But Secrist retired the side in the fifth inning and left the game.

The Saints put this story on their Website about the game, picked up by several wire services.

==The story has also got a snip of national attention when the Associated Press sent this out on Monday, picked up on the Boston Globe website.

==Locally, Secrist's story is gaining momentum.
A story on Secrist from Wednesday's St. Paul Pioneer Press, that credits the Daily News in helping Secrist get another tryout with Saints based on Veeck seeing the story we ran last July.
Secrist also says at the end if he's cut, he'd ask to stay on as a pitching coach.

==And here's a link to the piece that KCAL Channel 9 did on him a few weeks ago, before he left for St. Paul.

Here's Jon to explain more about how the day unfolded:

You think I really read all 30 books in the last 30 days? Enough, I will admit, to get a flavor of some of the books. I couple, I gladly made it all the way through. The first one -- "101 Baseball Places" -- was the first that held my interest from start to finish. The others, not as much, but that's more a function of the clock and this fast-paced review process than the content. They will be read.
The others I'm quite fond of, if you must know, are, in this particular order, the book on Chief Bender, Rob Neyer's latest effort, "Benchclearing," and George Vescey's paperback reissue of "Baseball."
Here's one last link to all 30 if somehow you dozed off during a week or so (and expect an occasional reference to other new baseball books as they drop in during the season, especially later toward World Series time):

The book: "Baseball's Greatest Hit: The Story of 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game' "

The author: Thompson Robert, Tim Wiles and Andy Strasberg

How to find it: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation, 222 pages, $29.95.

Where we'd go looking for it: We recommend, for this and anything else, Powell's online.

The scoop: Our most favorite version of the song, and one we've saved on TiVo until the machine finally busts, is what Harpo Marx did on his harp during a 1955 episode of "I Love Lucy." Yes, it seems pretty random, but if that could be and played at my funeral, I'd die a happy baseball fan.
The one you and your kids sing at the ballgame has its own charm as well, and there are many other versions to be found. And the authors have done so.

"Take Me Out To the Ballgame", celebrating its 100th anniversary, is more than just the third-most popular song of all time (behind "Happy Birthday" and "The Star Spangeled Banner." It needed a book about its history, and now we've got it. One hundred years later.

For those who need to know the results of the 29th Sports Emmy Awards but were afraid to ask if Chris Berman won anything, the answer (as they were handed out last night):

Al Michaels: Best play by play (NBC's Sunday Night Football) -- sixth time he's won it.
John Madden: Best analyst (NBC's Sunday Night Football) -- at least his 15th ... we think they've stopped counting
Cris Colinsworth: Best studio analyst (NBC/HBO NFL)
James Brown: Best studio host (CBS' NFL pregame)
HBO's "Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush": Outstanding documentary
HBO's "Real Sports" story on NFL consussions: Outstanding Sports Journalism
Fox's Fiesta Bowl: Outstanding Live Sports Special
Fox's NASCAR: Outstanding Live Sports Series
ESPN's College GameDay: Outstanding Weekly Studio Show
TNT's Inside the NBA: Outstanding Daily Studio Show
Golf Channel's AimPoint: Technical Achievement Award

Going in, ESPN/ABC led the list with 37 combined nominees (27 for ESPN); HBO had the most for one single network (31, 10 of which were from "Real Sports" and "Inside the NFL"), while NBC had 23 nominations, Fox 18 and CBS 17.

Just a reminder about Bob Costas' special tonight on HBO (10 to 11:30 p.m.) on the state of the modern sports media.
Just the fact that I had to leach a clip of it off AOL's Fanhouse blog so I could transcribe a quote from the Washington Post's Mike Wilbon (oh, right, he's also on ESPN) in which he says:
"Our producers, they're 40 years old, incredibly well educated, incredibly informed ... they don't care about newspapers and that depresses the hell out of me."

Does that say enough about where we find our sports media now?

The book: "But Didn't We Have Fun?: An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870"

The author: Peter Morris

How to find it: Ivan R. Dee Publishing, 304 pages, $27.50.

Where we'd go looking for it: We stumbled across it first on Amazon, so they get the finder's fee. It's also at Powell's.

The scoop: Morris, who wrote the 2007 book, "Level Playing Fields: How the Groundskeeping Murphy Brothers Shaped Baseball" as well as the 2006 gem, "Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball: The Game Behind the Scenes," talks to players and writers about things they know about that period when the pro game really started to take shape after the Knickerbocker Club of New York City published its rulebook in 1845, establishing 20 regulations, such as no more such thing as "soaking" -- the ability to throw the ball at the runner to record an out.
The two factors that Morris believes brought the game from amateur pioneering play are the Civil War and players who were more serious about changing it from just a pasttime. The game needed someone to bring all the versions together and not make it such a thing as backyard croquet. Morris takes it up to and past the 1867 decision by the National Club of Washington to make the first extended road trip, 3,000-miles through Ohio, St. Louis and Chicago. Through that, the Cincinnati Red Legs began, and are still in business today.
Books like these are needed -- even demanded -- as history continues to retell the way things were way back before a lot of this was documented for the modern-day reader.

How it goes down in the scorebook: A wicked bare-handed catch.

The book: "Anatomy of Baseball"

The author: edited by Lee Gutkind and Andrew Blauner (foreword by Yogi Berra)

How to find it: Southern Methodist University Press, 192 pages, $22.50

Where we'd go looking for it: At the publisher's website, as well as Powells online bookstore and Amazon.

The scoop: One of our favorite baseball books in years gone by was "Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game" by Dan Okrent, which came out in 1985 and has since made its way to paperback. He takes a simple June game in 1982 between the Milwaukee Brewers and Baltimore Orioles and breaks down every element, explaining what went into all kinds of simple-looking decisions.
But the anatomy done here on the game of baseball cuts much deeper.

The book: "Going Going Gone: The Art of Trade in Major League Baseball"

The author: Fran Zimniuch

How to find it: Taylor Trade Publishing, 240 pages, $16.95 (paperback)

Where we'd go looking for it: At the publisher's website, as well as Powell's and Amazon.

The scoop: Was just reading a piece by the L.A. Times retired sports writer Ross Newhan about the worst trades in Dodgers' history, and the one where Fred Claire sent future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez to the Montreal Expos for second baseman Delino DeShields still goes down as the one, in retrospect, that really stunk.
At the time, of course, Martinez was a 21-year-old with a 10-5 record in one full season as a Dodger (1993), having pitched 65 games, striking out 117 in 109 innings. But he was best known as Ramon Martinez's little brother, and thought to be (by Tommy Lasorda) too slight of build to hold up to any kind of endurance test that one must go through as a starting pitcher. DeShields, meanwhile, was a 24-year-old second baseman on the rise, four years of MLB service, 42 or more steals each season.
And in three years with the Dodgers, he did pretty much nothing. Was traded off to St. Louis, then to Baltimore, then the Cubs, then was out of baseball at age 33. Martinez ... you know what happened.
It's most amusing to us that Claire, the Dodgers' GM who pulled the trigger on that one, was given the space to write the forward for Zimniuch's book.

How it goes down in the scorebook: E-GM.

Other books by Zimniuch:
"Shortened Seasons: The Untimely Deaths of Major League Baseball's Stars and Journeymen" in 2007
"Richie Ashburn Remembered" in 1980

On the activity sport of kayaking, which he sort of participated in during the 2007 MLB Home Run Derby in McCovey Cove outside of Pac Bell AT&T Cellphone Ripoff Park in San Francisco, waiting for Barry Bonds to hit it to him (but Bonds didn't participate), Kenny Mayne writes in his new book, "An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport" that .... well, nothing.
He has absolutely nothing about kayaking.
The closest he has is a chapter on rowing (page 155), which begins:

"In rowing, a bunch of men or women sit in a boat and row as hard as they can while another person, the coxswain, yells at them to row even harder.
"Wikipedia says that 'coxswain' means 'boat servant.' If it's in Wikipedia it must be true. ...
"I figure the people who grow up to be coxswains are the same ones who sat around cracking up for hours about the fact that in badminton the thing people hti back and forth is called a shuttlecock (see 'Badminton')."

Before we flip back over to page 10 for that badminton stuff, we offer more Q-and-A, spinning off today's Daily News column, from a recent Q-and-A-type interview we had with KMayne poolside at the hotel across the street from the Beverly Center ... the French one ... the name escapes me ...

Daniel Green is the nephew of famed peanut vendor Roger Owens, who we caught up with at the Dodgers' Coliseum exhibition game recently and wrote about in a Sunday column. Green is also the author of Roger's biography, "The Perfect Pitch," which came out in 2004.

After our story came out, many readers asked where they could find copies of the book -- outside the usual spots, such as local bookstores. The Dodger Stadium stores carry it. You can also track it down on amazon.com, at these links on the usual Google search, and Owens' official site, www.rogerowenspeanutman.com.

Here's a new YouTube.com clip that Daniel put up to help promote the book -- pick it up at the stadium and have him autograph it right there on the loge level behind home plate if you track him own:

In Aug. 2005, as part of their 50 days in 50 states, ESPN did a piece on Roger as well, which is available at this link, narrated by John Anderson.

By RALPH D. RUSSO

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Big-time college football never has been closer to having a playoff. Don’t get too excited. There are still plenty of obstacles standing in the way, and at best it’s probably seven years away
from becoming a reality — if it ever does.
But, hey, at least the people in charge want to talk about it.
In Bowl Championship Series terms, that’s progress.
“This whole postseason of college football, since going back into the mid- to early ‘90s, has been an evolution. Significant change traditionally has not come speedily,” Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner and current BCS coordinator John Swofford told The Associated Press in a recent telephone interview, chuckling at his obvious understatement. “I’ve often equated it to turning a battle ship.”
The commissioners of the 11 major college football conferences, along with the athletic director of Notre Dame, will dock in south Florida for three days of meetings starting Monday, and talk about steering their ship into previously uncharted waters.
Namely, what would it take to implement the so-called plus-one model into the BCS.

And what role will TV play in it? Read on ..

The book: "Living on the Black: Two Pitchers, Two Teams, One Season to Remember"

The author: John Feinstein

How to find it: Little Brown and Company, 544 pages, $26.99.

Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's has it, as does Amazon.

The scoop: You the benefit of the doubt to Feinstein, author of gobs of these kinds of heavy analysis sports books -- "A Season on the Brink," going back to '87, and up through "The Last Amateurs" to "The Majors" to "Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four" to ... you get the picture. Most of those books carry Feinstein's name almost as big, if not bigger, than the title themselves.
Few of them, however, as as thick as this tome, or carry as many pages. You decide if there's a payoff when you finally swim to the deep end and can't go back.

Lamond Murray had his second double-double in as many games, but the L.A. Lightning dropped to 0-3 on the season after a 109-97 loss to the Gary (Ind.) Steelheads on Friday in the International Basketball League contest on the Cal Luthern campus in Thousand Oaks.
Murray had 18 points and 10 rebounds while Fred Vinson scored a team-best 20, including six 3-pointers.
The Lightning returns to face the Steelheads again tonight at the Gilbert Sports Arena for a 7:30 p.m. contest.

Apparently, 53-year-old Westlake Village pitcher Jon Secrist showed management that he has at least enough to get an invite to the pre-party.

In his journey to rejoin the team that once employed him eight years ago, Secrist didn't throw Friday as the second day of the open tryout for the St. Paul Saints was rained out. But during that indoor session on Thursday, where he showed manager George Tsamis his dancing knuckleball, it convinced everyone that he earned the invitation to stick around for at least another week or so.

Secrist hasn't been offered a contract or a roster spot yet, according to Saints officials. But they made the roster invite official with a news release on their website.

“Jon will come into camp with us and will compete for a spot on our roster,” said Tsamis. “He is excited about the opportunity.”

He is scheduled to make his first appearance Tuesday night in an exhibition game against the Ibaraki Golden Golds from Japan. That is, if it doesn't snow.

Not that Secrist has any guarantees. The team also announced it has invited a right-handed pitcher named Mitch Wylie to camp, and signed former University of Minnesota right-handed pitcher Craig Molldrem to a contract. It appears there's one, maybe two, roster spots open for a pitcher, and Secrist may be battling it out with Wylie. The Saints officially have 26 players coming into camp -- 13 pitchers and 13 position players. During the first week of the season, the Saints can carry 24 players, then must trim it down to the maximum of 22 after that.

In another interesting twist, the Saints announced Friday that former Dodgers Cy Young Award winning relief pitcher Mike Marshall will come to the team's camp Saturday to "explain his methods and ideologies to the pitching staff."

At least Marshall, 65, will make Secrist feel a little younger.

Here's Secrist's take on what transpired Friday:

The book: "Hammerin' Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid"

The author: John Rosengren

How to find it: Sourcebooks, 332 pages, $16.95

Where we'd go looking for it: For excerpts, go to Rosengren's personal website, who has a link to the sale of the book on Amazon.com. You can also find it on Powell's.

The scoop: If Mike Shropshire is banking on the theme that 1975 was the "Last Real Season," then Rosengren will make a case for 1973 (if you had a collection of Topps baseball cards, the three on the cover would tip off the year).
Thirty-five years ago, Hank Aaron, George Steinbrenner and Willie Mays were baseball's headliners -- as was Reggie Jackson and his Swingin' A's, who were in the middle of their three-year run as world champs.
Rosengren says he was 9 years old living in Minneapolis when he experienced this year first hand -- bound to make an impression on any kid.
This was the first year of the designated hitter. It was Steinbrenner's take-over of the Yankees, and his immediate involvement in a scandalous coverup that traces back to the Watergate scandal going on at the time.

Iafrate, who we had as the favorite among the previous winners eligible at 4/1 odds, was declared winner of the 14th annual Jim Rome “Smack Off” on today’s show.

Although, if we had a vote – and we in no way deserve one – we were simply crying with laughter at how 45-1 longshot rookie Bode from Pearland, Texas, interrupted his call to put his 5-year-old on the phone to run some of the best kidsmack this side of the Alamo.

Iafrate, the 2004 winner, said this victory does deserve an asterisk since Sean the Cablinasian wasn’t here to defend his last three titles.

For winning, he received a Slingbox and a new computer, plus a mention on “Jim Rome Is Burning” later today on ESPN.

The rest of the top 10:

==2. Doc Mike DiTolla (the ’97 and ’00 winner, who we put at 500/1 odds based on no apparent reason).
==3. Joe in the O.C. (we had a 6/1)
==4. Stevie Carbone (on the 10th anniversary of his only win, we had at 45/1)
==5. Terrence in Sierra Madre (we had as the 3/2 favorite)
==6. Jay Mohr (we had 5/2)
==7. Greg in Vegas (we had 5/1)
==8. Silk (went in 11/1)
==9. Jeff in Richmond (at 12/1 as a defending champ)
==10. Casey in Vegas (at 35/1)

There was a specific reason why recently retired Brett Favre agreed weeks in advance to hop onto the "Late Night with David Letterman" show and chat it up Thursday night.

He was selling. You are buying.

For the 20th year of the Madden NFL video game, they've decided to use Brett as the cover boy -- why they didn't do it during his playing career is now obvious. John Madden didn't want him to go down with an injury, like what happened with just about any other player who has graced the cover.

"Brett Favre is a perfect fit for the Madden NFL 09 cover, as he epitomizes everything the franchise has stood for the past 20 years - longevity, excellence, and a love of football," said Madden NFL 09's executive producer Dale Jackson.

Please pass the Kleenex.

Now, with Brett savely on the shelf -- allegedly -- Madden 09 can use this as a way to celebrate the love, rather than worry for his safety.

So, has The Curse really ended? We'll know if Brett decides to unretire in a couple of months.

After punting on today's media column, we've got more notes ... AKA, recycle in, recycle out:

==At Wednesday night's Lakers-Nuggets game, fans were accosted upon entry at Staples Center and handed this card:

Alas, it had nothing to do with the usual gentleman's club discount cards you're used to being handed in the Staples Center vicinity before every athletic event and quickly slip into your back pocket, just in case.

Apparently, the 570-AM marketing guys still want the phrase that UCLA's Rick Neuheisel created and Dan Patrick perpetuated to keep on selling.
Passion bucket lives. Maybe.

The deal is, you're supposed to put your warm thumb on that plastic square and hope it goes from black to purple. A mood card, if you will. With no credit given whatsoever to Neuheisel, who came up with the phrase after he was hired in early January to describe how his team must be when it takes on rival USC.

Patrick liked it so much, he got Bob Costas to drop it into an HBO "Inside the NFL" show, and Rick Eisen to get it into an NFL Network spot. Patrick kept asking TNT's Reggie Miller to work it into a broadcast, but he didn't -- instead, Kobe Bryant said it two times to Cheryl Miller in a post-game interview, which led to him getting on Patrick's show and expanding upon it. Patrick considered the phrase dead after Fox's Joe Buck blew him off when asked to sneak it into to the NFC title game coverage.
The bucket phrase refuses to kick the bucket.

"I'm only human; I can't control this craze," Patrick said via email of the KLAC card giveaway. "I just sit back and watch it like a proud father watching his son in Little League."

Long live the passion bucket, which already has a home on the UrbanDictionary.com and a website selling gear started by a UCLA MBA student, mislabeled as a leopard-print hat, yet there are still folks who have no clue what it means.

Read on ...

As long as we're talking about 53-year-old knucleball pitchers trying to become the oldest pro baseball player, how about a 53-year-old outifielder penciled in for his first career start on the college baseball team?

John Wilson is expected to earn his first start in right field and bat leadoff for the Division III Penn State-Altoona team in the first game of a doubleheader on Sunday, the Associated Press reports.
"It doesn't matter much for me," Wilson said in a phone interview with the AP about his own batting practice. "I'm a natural!"

Wilson is believed to be one of the oldest men to play collegiate baseball, though the NCAA doesn't keep records. He struck out in his only plate appearance this season, and he played in just 10 games before this season. But Wilson says just being able to play college baseball is a blessing after drug and alcohol
addictions earlier in his life drove him to suicidal thoughts.

The Pittsburgh native credits a stint at a rehabilitation center in 1986 as the start of a turnaround, and he proudly boasts that he's been clean and sober since then.

"Baseball is always going to be part of my life. That's what makes me happy," Wilson said.

Wilson's eligibility runs out after this season, and he is scheduled to complete his degree in human development and family studies in 2009. He has aspirations to coach full-time when he finishes his studies.

Jon Secrist, the 53-year-old knuckleball pitcher out of Westlake Village trying to catch on with the minor league St. Paul Saints, left home on Friday morning and took five days to get to Minnesota by rental car to start trying to impress team personnel with his fabled flutterpitch.

The team had an open tryout scheduled for Thursday, but it was rained out, and more wet weather -- including possibly snow -- is forcast for Friday, meaning Secrist may only get one more chance to impress manager George Tsamis , a former big-league pitcher himself, during an indoor workout at a local college. That could either lead to an invite to full training camp, or a sorry-but-thanks slap on the back, since the team's roster already seems to have nine pitchers with several candidates to make the No. 10 and (maybe) No. 11 spots.

By showing up, Secrist has drawn enough attention to have the local NBC affiliate, KARE Channel 11, do a piece on him where he said after Thursday's workout: "I'm facing guys; I'm not quite their granddad, maybe their dad."

Here's Secrist's latest diary entry:

It's the kind of broken record the Angels love to hear, and the Dodgers don't.
And the timing is all the more interesting on a day the Dodgers announced long overdue plans to spruce things up around Dodger Stadium, at a cost of about $500 million.
For the fifth consecutive year, a survey of ESPN.com's "Fan Nation" -- that's about 80,000 opinions -- have determined the Angels deliver the most among all MLB teams in the "Fan Satisfaction Rankings."
The Dodgers come in the 2008 poll ranked 20th among the 30 MLB teams.
As for the 122 pro teams included in the survey, the NFL's Indianapolis Colts rank No. 1 overall, based on what they give back to fans who invest their time and money in the organization. The Angels are No. 6 overall; the Dodgers are No. 77.

As warped as it might be to even consider posting realistic odds for Friday's Jim Rome 14th annual "Smack-Off," and with apologies to whomever is running the fansites Stucknut.com or The Andrew Extravaganza and seem to be far more diligent in posting predictions based on the history of this event, we've crunched the numbers and stuck our finger to the wind to establish this as our true gauge as to what may happen between the hours of 9 a.m. and noon Pacific Daylight Time on the 25th day of April in the Year of our Lord 2008 (heard in Southern California on KLAC-AM 570):

Ineligible:
==Sean the Cablinasian (five-time winner; on a station that competes with Rome in the Houston market)

Previous winners with exemptions:
==Iafrate: 4/1
==Silk in Huntington Beach: 11/1
==Jeff in Richmond: 12/1
==Stevie Carbone: 45/1
==Doc Mike DiTolla: 500/1 (has he just disappeared?)
==Jeffery DiTolla: 500/1
==JT The Brick (the first winner in 1995, who parlayed that into a syndicated talk-show gig, and reportedly said he'd participate last year, but didn't): 1,995/1

Other returning invitees:
==Terrence in Sierra Madre (aka: The Best Caller Never to Win a Smack-Off): 3/2
==Jay Mohr: 5/2
==Greg in Vegas: 5/1
==Joe in O.C.: 6/1
==Rachel in Houston: 8/1
==Trapper in Dana Point: 17/1
==Jeff in Phoenix: 30/1
==Casey in Vegas: 35/1
==Corey in Ann Arbor: 35/1
==Mike in Wichita: 40/1
==Irie Craig: 45/1
==Oren in Denver: 45/1
==Lear in Anapolis: 50/1
==Gino in San Antonio: 650/1 (even taking into account he came on the show Thursday, had his say, and then claimed he could not be there for Friday's event)
==Jim in Fall River: 650/1

New invitees:
==Chad in Portland: 22/1
==Bode in Pearland, Texas: 65/1
==JD in Nashville: 750/1
==Brendan in Wilmington: 12,551/1

Has absolutely no chance:

==Vic from NoCal (aka, Mr. Wednesday, called his shot last year and did not show up; called his shot again this week, also claiming he'd pull a 'Vic Hat Trick' in winning as a rookie, doing it after calling his shot, and going wire-to-wire -- which included a request that he go first, pulling a Sergei Bubka and setting the bar high so the rest of the field was like Dan O'Brien at the '96 Olympics. Real fresh. He also claims to have a direct line into the show to help his cause. Or, to set up complete disappointment).

==Odds subject to change depending on what knucklehead tries to call his shot on today's show.

==Listen to Rome's promo for Friday's event.

This is the cover of Time magazine that will hit the newsstands tomorrow:

We agree, it's far more creepy than this:

And even this:

The book: "Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star"

The author: Tom Swift

How to find it: University of Nebraska Press, 346 pages, $24.95.

Where we'd go looking for it: On the publisher's website, as well as Powell's and Amazon.

The scoop: This has movie script written all over it, almost like Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit."
Here's Charles Albert Bender, nicknamed "Chief" because of his American Indian heritage, building a Hall of Fame career while facing the injustices of a racially intolerant world between 1903 and 1925. If you look at the write-up they have for him on the Baseball Hall of Fame site, Bender "overcame subtle discrimination, and a derisive nickname, to become one of the top pitchers of his era."
Guess again.

The plans are for Sunday's "Writing On (and off) The Wall" to take on ESPN's Kenny Mayne , who has been able to mockument the sporting scene (a la Jon Stewart's book, "America") with his new book, "An Incomplete & Inaccurate History of Sport," which includes an intentionally long subtitle.

The book came out Tuesday, and Mayne is in L.A. this week, doing a signing at the Grove on Thursday night (Barnes & Noble, 7:30 p.m.) and appearing at the giant non-Daily News Festival of Books on Saturday at noon. There's more info on his website, www.kennymayneiswritingabook.com.
He's also taping a segment tonight for next week's "Dancing With The Stars" espisode ... where he's thankfully not dancing, just analyzing things.

This could have all made for a better Friday media column, but we figured that it would be more newsworthy to focus instead on the changes ESPN and the NFL Network have to make with the new time limits on the first round of this weekend's NFL Draft. The whole thing has also been moved back to a 3 p.m. EST start so that it stumbles into prime-time and, for the most part, goes head-to-head with the NBA playoffs (including Lakers-Nuggets on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. PDT).

If that's too drab, we're also heading out to Staples Center tonight to chat it up with Marv Albert, who will do the call on at least the next three Lakers-Nuggets games for TNT (although, you can still enjoy the dulcet tones of Joel "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" Meyers and Stuart Lantz doing it on FSN West and KCAL Channel 9 this weekend).

The book: "Tim McCarver's Diamond Gems"

The author: Tim McCarver, with Jim Moskovitz and Danny Peary

How to find it: McGraw Hill, $24.95, 270 pages

Where we'd go looking for it: At the publisher's website, at the website for McCarver's TV show, and over at Powell's online bookstore.

The scoop: The Fox MLB analyst has this TV show, in its ninth season now, where he gabs with those who've played who are playing the game. And he sometimes comes across some nuggets.

So after a while, they got to thinking: Why not transcribe the interviews into a book?

The words may not jump off the page the way the interviews did on the screen, but at least there's some documentation of some goofy circumstances, nuggets of information about things that happened in baseball history, and insights into some people you may not have heard before.

"(This book) is the modern version of 'The Glory Of Their Times' ... It's fun and engaging and instructive and even sweet now and then." That's what Frank Deford had to say about it on the review blurb on the back. We won't go that far with the comparison.

The book: "Red Sox Rule: Terry Francona and Boston's Rise to Dominance"

The author: Michael Holley

How to find it: HarperEntertainment, 207 pages, $25.95.

Where we'd go looking for it: Our pals at Powells' online has it.

The scoop: Holley, the former Boston Globe reporter who used to get a lot more airtime as a talking head on EPSN's "Around The Horn," comes through with a book that really tries to defend Francona's part for the Red Sox's ability to win two world titles in the last four years.
Holley points out that Francona, in 2007, was only fourth in the AL manager of the year voting. In the last four years, he's never received a single first-place vote for that award.
For Dodger fans, there's plenty of commentary on J.D. Drew, Julio Lugo and Eric Gagne, for the parts they played in last year's title run. All of them were underachieving, Holley points out. More scathing stuff on Grady Little, as well, as if he's still on anyone's radar.
There's even some retro look at when Francona managed Michael Jordan's minor-league baseball attempt with the Birmingham Barons in 1993.
It's a nice timeline of material on Francona's arrival in Boston, through to the current season.

How it goes down in the scorebook: 1-to-3 to end the game and finish the curse ... hey, who has the game ball?

If you're really into Bosox dominance books, Tony Massarotti, a columnist with the Boston Herald, also has knocked out a book out called "Dynasty: The inside Story of How the Red Sox Became a Baseball Powerhouse" (St. Martin's Press, 320 pages, $24.95). It even has the endorsement of current commissioner Bud Selig, who writes: "Red Sox Nation comes alive in this thoughtful and penetrating look at one of the most famous teams in the country by an expert journalist who was there every step of the way.”
But again, calling the Red Sox a dynasty at this point seems only as a function of selling books.

From the listing in TV Guide, Episode 199, Season 9, entitled "Closet" (KNBC Channel 4, 10 p.m.):

"An investment banker's murder reveals his secret affair with a pro quarterback, who has an agent willing to do anything to protect his client."

A more detailed synopsis on "The Gays of Daytime" blog:

"When money manager Jeremy Grandon is found murdered in his loft, detectives Benson and Stabler initially suspect troubled teenager, Freddie Ramirez (guest star David Del Rio). A hidden video camera leads the detectives to the victims secret lover, Lincoln Morse (guest star Bailey Chase), a star-studded pro football player whose agent, Gary Lesley (guest star Rick Hoffman), may go too far in protecting his client’s persona."

Ripped from the headlines? Not the papers we've been reading. Draw your own conclusions. John Madden will be as well.

Topics on the table for today's edition of ESPN's "E:60" include the showdown between reporter Tom Farrey and the Houston Astros' Miguel Tejada, after the former quizzes the later on his real age.

Other stuff they'll cover:

==Caleb Campbell, captain of the West Point football team, trying to figure out his potential for the NFL as a strong safety with the draft coming up this week, and his commitment to active duty with the Army if he's not drafted or signed as a free agent. Rachel Nichols is all over it.
==A "gentleman's fight club" in the Silicon Valley with techhies. We're not sure why, but Jeremy Schaap seems to fit right in there.
==NFL Draft prospect and TCU defensive end Tommy Blake’s fight back from the throes of clinical depression.

TiVo it for today at 4 p.m.

The book: "An American Journey: My Life on the Field, in the Air, and on the Air"

The author: Jerry Coleman, with Richard Goldstein (and a forward by George Will)

How to find it: Triumph Books, 224 pages, $24.95.

Where we'd go looking for it: At the publisher's home website, as well as Powell's online bookstore .

The scoop: Jerry Coleman has always been one of our favorite guys in baseball, and if you're only aware of him by his Hall of Fame career as a broadcaster with the San Diego Padres since 1972 (he also did two years prior to that with the Angels), then it's time to catch up.
As the cover indicates, he's proud of his time in Marines during World War II and the Korean Conflict -- the only big-league player to serve in combat during both those wars as a dive-bomber and fighter-attack pilot, which interrupted his career as an All-Star second baseman with the Yankees (1949-57, a career that nearly spanned the entire career of Jackie Robinson's playing days with the rival Brooklyn Dodgers). Trivia: Coleman also wore No. 42.

Although we explain in today's Daily News column that Roger Cossack's first appearance for ESPN as a legal analyst came because of the Kobe Bryant rape allegations in the summer of 2003, we need to clarify.
If only for legal reasons.
"Do you remember that sausage race in Milwaukee, when the Pirates player hit one of the contestants?" Cossack asked, a reference to the Randall Simon incident in July, 2003, when he "maliciously assaulted" (according to the Wikipedia entry) the Italian sausage (with a female participant, Mandy Block, inside), knocking her over with a baseball bat and leading to a three-game MLB suspension.
"As a joke, Bob Ley had me on to talk about the legal and liability issues ... all tongue in cheek," said Cossack, who has since then has become an essential part of any "SportsCenter" when the discussion gets too legalese.
We have more of Cossack's thoughts on this, that and other things as the UCLA law school grad (Class of '66) and former lawyer in the L.A. County D.A.'s office afford us ample time to give him more than a two-minute "SportsCenter" shakedown:

==On how surprised he is about his presence on ESPN:
Cossack: "I don’t think ESPN had any idea that a lawyer would play as much of a role as it has turned out. And I had no idea. Once you start talking about the people, then people who get in trouble, it's all the same. It's now like Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall and we can't put it back together. No one can hide from it any more. It’s the kind of commuication we have today. The internet changed everything."

The book: "The Last Real Season: A Hilarious Look Back at 1975 -- When Major Leaguers Made Peanuts, the Umpires Wore Red, and Billy Martin Terrorized Everyone"

The author: Mike Shropshire

How to find it: Grand Central Publishing, 288 pages, $25.99

Where we'd go looking for it: It's over at Powells online store.

The scoop: Following up on Day 19's Billy Martin-George Steinbrenner feuds, here's more Martin hijinx, highlighting the season before Steinbrenner brought him aboard with the Yankees -- his final year as the Texas Rangers' skipper.
Just look at the cover -- it wreaks of baseball from the '70s, in a "Ball Four" sorta way.
So who won the World Series that year? C'mon. Maybe the greatest ever. Reds vs. Red Sox. Fisk homer in Game 6. Morgan's hit wins it in Game 7. The Ed Armbrister play in Game 3.
The "peanuts" that the average player made that year was $27,600. Greenies were pre-steroids (although alcohol was still in vogue). Afros and long hair worked. The A's had their mustaches still going. And two months after that classic World Series, the players finally won the right to free agency when an arbitrator ruled that the reserve clause granted a team only one additional year of service from a player, putting an end to perpetual renewal right the clubs had claimed.
So if '75 was the last real season, let's celebrate it.
Three years ago, Shropshire wrote "Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and 'The Worst Baseball Team in History' - The 1973-1975 Texas Rangers." The Fort Worth Star Telegram and Dallas Morning News writer knows the territory.
Shropshire notes that on July 28th of that season, famed Detroit resident and teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa went missing, and the Tigers started a losing streak of 19 games in a row. Shropshire wrote on the day that the Tigers blew a four-run lead in the bottom of the ninth: I drank three bottles of Stroh's beer in less than a minute and wrote that 'Jimmy Hoffa will show up in the left field stands with Amelia Earhart as his date before the Tigers will win another game.'

How it goes down in the scorebook: 1 to 9 to 7 to 5 triple play.

By Dan Gelston
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA -- Harvey Pollack has a dedication to numbers that would make a numerologist jealous. Add in a love for oddball NBA statistics that only he can break down and it’s no wonder he’s been called
“Super Stat” for more than 40 years.

For a man who’s never without a trivia question, here’s one for ol’ Harv: What took so long for a nickname?

“I think they wanted to make sure I’d stick around,” the 86-year-old Pollack said with a laugh.

Pollack earned the “Super Stat” moniker sometime in the 1966-67 season, or nearly 20 years after he started working for the Philadelphia Warriors in the NBA’s very first season. That makes Pollack truly an original. Now with the 76ers, he’s the only original NBA employee still working for one of the 30 teams.

He was courtside when Wilt scored 100. He coined the term “triple-double.” Pollack’s the only person in all
of Philadelphia’s deep, and mostly titleless, sports history known to ever wear four championship rings.

And his most famous number might be the one he scrawled on a piece of paper instead of typed for one of his books.

The book: "Ballad of Billy and George: The Tempestuous Baseball Marriage of Billy Martin and George Steinbrenner"

The author: Phil Pepe

How to find it: Globe Pequot Press, 272 pages, $24.95

Where we'd go looking for it: The publisher's website has it, as does Powell's online store.

The scoop: Any time you can get the word "tempestuous" in a book title, it's got some zing.
Pepe, the Yankees' beat writer from 1961-64, and again from '71-'84, also wrote the book "BillyBall" with Martin long ago, so he's able to cultivates past conversations with the late skipper, as well as Billy Martin Jr., Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry, Sparky Lyle, Goose Gossage, Bucky Dent, Clete Boyer, Graig Nettles, Lou Piniella, Clyde King and Gene Michael.
No Steinbrenner? Not even Oliver Platt?
What you weren't able to cull from ESPN's "The Bronx Is Burning" miniseries, here's more in print that goes prior to (when Steinbrenner hired him in '75) and after the 1977 Yankees season (up until Martin's death in 1989), covering the five times Steinbrenner hired and fired him.
The book publishers say Martin and Steinbrenner "were compared to Mutt and Jeff, Hatfield and McCoy, and even Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: two stubborn and driven men whose on-again off-again partnership entertained the nation for two decades." Next time I see Liz Taylor, I'll think "stubborn, driven man."

How it goes down in the scorebook: Manager ejection.

By Andrew Dalton
Associated Press

MARINA DEL REY -- Thanks to a revolution in the recognition of head injuries and the consequences they can hold for athletes at every level, concussion denial seems to be on the way out.

“It’s taken a long time to get there, but right now I think the public awareness is huge,” Dr. Robert Cantu of the Neurologic Sports Injury Center at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s hospital said Friday at the second National Sports Concussion Summit.

“It’s as if the Berlin Wall of concussion denial has fallen,” said sports agent Leigh Steinberg, noting a significant shift in both attitude and action within sports since the first summit was held a year ago.

Steinberg, who helped organize the summit along with the Sports Concussion Institute, is sponsoring a
California program that will institute so-called “baseline testing” in 1,400 high schools, where athletes are given a cognitive exam that can be repeated after injuries to measure brain impairment.

The book: "Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty"

The author: Daniel R. Levitt

How to find it: University of Nebraska Press, $29.95, 456 pages

Where we'd go looking for it: The publisher's home site, as well as www.edwardbarrow.com. Powell's online store has it as well.

The scoop: Even more Yankees history (tired of it yet?), but if you don't start here, then maybe you're missing the Adam and Eve story of how this whole dynasty was created.

Barrow was the man who managed Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox to their last World Series titles (1918) before "the curse." He then assembled the Yankees' roster after coming to the franchise in 1920 by buying players outright -- such as Ruth -- and developing a farm system. They won their first title in '21 -- and 13 more under his tenure through 1945, as he found Lou Gehrig and brought in Joe DiMaggio.

Paul McCartney ESPN is dead.
Naw, not really.
But wouldn't it be cool if it was? Then, everyone could talk about how cool it was when it was alive?!? And we'd have a bitchin' funeral for it, and then remember all the neat stuff we liked about it, and it would forever be in our hearts... and Elton John would make up a song about it. And, and, and ...
What the hell is going on?
ESPN, that's what. It wants you to eulogize it.
You can't even make this crap up.
If you're a member of the "ESPN Fan Zone," you've recently received not one, but a follow-up email, that reads as such:

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco Giants have dumped him. Now the city's Wax Museum of Fisherman's Wharf is demoting him.

Barry Bonds has lost his prime spot in the lobby of the popular museum of wax replicas.
The museum moved the home run king's wax likeness downstairs to join his godfather Willie Mays and other sports heroes. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie moved into Bonds' high-profile spot on Thursday.

Museum curator Curtis Huber says they decided to move the slugger downstairs because he isn't signed with the Giants this season and it appears his baseball career is over.

The replica of Bonds, created in 2003, joins more than 270 figures and scenes in the underground exhibit.

More to tunnel through after the remarks about the NBA playoffs in today's media column, and everything else that has people talking out the sides of their mouths:

**NBA**

==TNT's Reggie Miller, on the Lakers' chances of winning the NBA title without Andrew Bynum returning:
"Can the Lakers win without Bynum? No. If he does come back, Phil Jackson is going to put him in the role that he was in before he was injured and averaging a double-double. All he has to do is rebound and block shots, the scoring will (fall on) Kobe, Pau and Lamar. If he comes back and plays 12 minutes a game, average six to eight rebounds and three blocked shots, (the Lakers) will win it hands-down.”

==ESPN's Jeff Van Gundy, on the Lakers' chances of winning the NBA title without Andrew Bynum returning:
"Bynum helps, but they're the favorite team even without him. If it does come back, it'll be interesting to see if (Jackson) pairs him with Pau Gasol. I'm not sure you put Bynum and Gasol and Odom on the floor together, even if they're your best three front-line players. Will they compliment each other when Odom is at the four with either Bynum or Gasol?"

==More from Van Gundy on how the Lakers' season played out, from crazy summer to current leaders in the Western Conference:
"When you hijack another team's best player for a third-string point guard, that will always help you. If you put Gasol on the Rockets, without Yao, would they be more of a force? Would Phoenix be better with Gasol? Would New Orleans have a better chance (with Gasol)? Take a third-string point guard for a 20/10 guy."

Last July, we wrote about the story of Jon Secrist, the Westlake Village knuckleball pitcher who eight years ago had a short-lived chance at playing for the independent league St. Paul Saints minor-league team, one that haunted him for years.

Secrist's stats for the 1999 Saints, at age 44: Two games, 8 2/3 innings, 0-1 record, 9.34 ERA, 16 hits, 10 runs (nine earned), five walks, two strike outs and three home runs allowed. He was so disappointed by his effort, he pretty much gave up on pitching any more. And he says he never even saw the $700 he was promised from a contract. Not that it mattered. He'd pretty much given up on baseball again.

After Saints owner Mike Veeck saw the story, he contacted Secrist in December and invited him to the team's spring training camp. Secrist, who turned 53 in January, convinced him he could do it, and since then has been getting back in shape and pitching in semi-pro games in the San Fernando Valley.

The Saints' open tryout camp is Thursday, April 24. Training camp begins shortly thereafter and the season exhibition opener is April 28, with the season opener May 8. The team appears to have 23 players on its roster, including 10 pitchers, but nothing is finalized yet.

Here's the first installment of Secrist's road trip back to St. Paul, Minn.:

The Los Angeles Lightning of the International Basketball League plays the first game in franchise history Friday night at the 1,500-seat Gilbert Sports Arena on the Cal State Lutheran campus in Thousand Oaks, the first of 12 straight home games to start the 2008 season.

The Lightning, coached by Ron Quarterman, face the Battle Creek (Mich.) Knights on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Future home opponents for the next six weekends include Gary (Ind.) Steelheads, Las Vegas Stars, Holland (Mich.) Blast, China Shanxi Kylins and Windy City Soldiers.

The team, which has an 18-game schedule through June, signed former Clippers first-round draft pick Lamond Murray, who recently played in China and last year was with the IBL’s Santa Barbara franchise.

Among some of the players who've made the opening-day roster:

The press conference starts at 10 a.m., and we've been ordered by those who control this newsflash that we can't write anything about it until the embargo posted ... but we just can't wait to hear the jeers, sneers and outright guffaws from those who actually expense gas to go out to the City of Industry to listen to multi-multi-multi- real-estate rich dude Ed Roski lay out his plans for a new football stadium that he says could get Southern California an NFL team by 2002 2009.

Y'all know Ed, right?

Staples Center developer. Part owner of the Kings. And of the Lakers. And of Ralphs grocery store. Owns Majestic Reality, so he's got money to burn these days on the thriving commercial real estate market. Went to Loyola High. USC grad (on the board of trustees). Vietnam Vet. Ranked No. 320 of the 400 richest people by Forbes magazine in 2005. Then moved up to No. 197 in 2006. Then sunk back to No. 524 on the 2008 list.

Really good guy. And every time we see his mugshot, there's an NFL logo behind him. So the league has to listen to him. Except to say that, in this case, they haven't endorsed anything he's doing. Meaning, he's taking a heck of a gamble... Unless the USFL is coming back.

He's alreay leaked the story out to the major Los Angeles newspapers (perhaps even ours) draw some buzz before having this press conference today. Heck, he even developed a website that shows it off better than we could ever do with our limited used of adjectives and dangling participles.

The Los Angeles Amazons start their 2008 season in the National Women’s Football Association with a home game Saturday against the Phoenix Prowlers. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. at Bassett High School in La Puente.
In the Western Division of the NWFA's Southern Conference, the Amazons will play eight regular-season games, none out of the division. They face the Prowlers three times, including the season finale on June 21. They'll also play the Arizona Wildfire three times and the Modesto Magic twice.
“It is a refreshing feeling to be able to compete against new and upcoming teams," team general manager Kay Carter said on the team website. "We look forward to creating new rivalries and establishing long term friendship with the local teams."
Head coach Aubrey Duncan also says on the site: "This is by far the most talented group of athletes we have had over the last six years. One of the most positive things we have going for us is we have enough players so we do not have to play them on both sides of the ball. We have never had that choice before. We have our full '07 team back with lots of new rookies.They are good athletes with lots of speed."

The book: "The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of '78"

The author: Richard Bradley

How to find it: Free Press, $25, 286 pages

Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's online book store has it. Don't expect to find it in the Red Sox team store on Yawkey Way. Or, at least to be a big seller there.

The scoop: A press release that came with my copy had this blurb:
"Though it tells the tale of an amazing baseball story, The Greatest Game is not just a sports book; it is a book about the common struggle we all feel in our lives between continuity and evolution, between the hard realities of adulthood and the eternal human need for a safe place in which we can play games -- that profound childhood desire simply to have fun."
Really? Looks like it's about Bucky "Freakin'" Dent clearing the Monster, and Yaz poppin' out to end the thing.

Craig Robinson, the new Oregon State basketball coach after coaching at Brown the last two seasons, was on the syndicated radio show "Fox Game Time Live" Tuesday with Andrew Siciliano and Krystal Fernandez talking about the fact that he's the brother in law of Democratic presidental candidate Barack Obama:

Siciliano: For those that don’t know, your sister Michelle, is married to Senator Obama. When do you get Secret Service protection?

Robinson: I don’t think I do. Even if they end up winning, you know, I live in Corvallis now. I don’t need it.

The book: "Yogi: The Life and Times of an American Original"

The author: Carlo DeVito

How to find it: Triumph Book, 432 pages, $25.95.

Where we'd go looking for it: Partial to Powell's online book store. There's also the author's site about all that is about his book at www.yogino8.blogspot.com

The scoop: After all those books on Yankee Stadium, how about the stadium's most original employee?
DeVito (now there's a New York name for you) wants to debunk (now there's a New York phrase for you) all the myths about the Great No. 8.
OK, but this really happened: On the card he gave his wife for their 20th anniversary, he signed it: "Love, Yogi Berra."
"Berra is a prisoner of his own fame and his legacy is a victim of it as well," writes DeVito. Let's cut through all the tall tales and see someone who is "genuinely one of the greatest players ever to pick up a bat and ball.... And no matter how humorous his remarks are, his accomplishments were hard-earned and fairly won."
So the man who won three MVPs and was a part of 21 World Series (14 as a player) has another side we don't know of? He's been misunderstood? Maybe it's because ...
(Wait, I'll get back to that thought after I see Yogi in this Aflac commercial again, the one with the duck... hilarious).
Before reading this, maybe you should also find Berra's autobiography, from 1998: "The Yogi Book: I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said!", or his followup in 2003: "What Time Is It? You Mean Now?: Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All". Or this, from 2001: "When You Come to a Fork In the Road, Take It: Inspiration and Wisdom from one of Baseball's Greatest Heroes"
Need we go on? So where does the perception of him being the Norm Crosby of Squatting come from?
Definitely, don't confuse this book with "Autobiography of a Yogi," by Paramahansa Yogananda. That would be a mistake.
One that Berra probably has even made himself.

How it goes down in the scorebook: Catcher's non-interference

Coming soon: Allen Barra's book, "Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee"

Heidi Androl, the Kings' online video vixen, has been hired by the league to do feature stories during the Stanley Cup playoffs, and one of her first stops was exposing a South Bay secret: The Redondo Beach Cafe on Pacific Coast Highway is hockey headquarters, especially for Montreal Canadians fans.
Brothers Chris and Kosta Tsangaris, Greek Americans and Montreal natives, co-own the spot and are rockin' it every night during the playoffs -- especially for Montreal games -- on a 70-inch plasma high-def screen, serving up specialties such as Montreal smoked meat (go with the hot sub or the Rachel Special), poutine, Canadian Beer, hot dogs (including one called the Lucky Luc Dog) and Montreal bagels.
More background: Chris was a former middle linebacker on George Allen's Long Beach State squad, adn then played in the Canadian Football League. He started the graduate program in sport management at Long Beach State and is the managing director. And if you scroll to the bottom of this list of CFL Grey Cup records, Chris share the mark for most special teams tackles in one game (1993).

Pope John Paul I, born Albino Luciani, lasted only 33 days as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, from Aug. 26 to Sept. 28, 1978.

Another great Italian Catholic, former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, in his second year in charge of the team, was in the middle of a pennant race during that 33-day stretch. The Dodgers eventually won the NL West and went to the World Series, only to be defeated again by the Yankees.

Somehow, Lasorda met John Paul I.

At least, that's the story he and the Dodgers are going with, as a release came out today saying Lasorda (that's him, arms ready to grab someone, left) will be at the White House on Wednedsay (10:30 a.m.), at the request of President Bush, to help welcome Pope Benedict XVI (that's him, arms ready to grab someone, above) to the U.S. After that, Lasorda will also be at a dinner hosted by the Bush family tomorrow night.

The team's statement about the visit includes:
"Lasorda, who has frequently been called to serve in dignitary roles on numerous occasions for President Bush and Major League Baseball, has previously met two Popes, His Holiness Pope John Paul I and His Holiness Pope John Paul II. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will mark the third. Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass at Dodger Stadium on September 16, 1987, halfway through Lasorda’s tenure as Dodger manager."

Not that we doubt the validity of it. But we do.

If you're keeping score at home, the 15 books we've already covered during the 30 days of baseball books in 30 days of April (again, these are only books that have come out on baseball this spring):

April 1: "101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out"

April 2: "Baseball's Greatest Quotations: An Illustrated Treasury of Baseball Quotations and Historical Lore"

April 3: "The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia: Fifth Edition"

April 4: "My Bat Boy Days: Lessons I Learned from the Boys of Summer" by Steve Garvey

April 5: "Change Up: An Oral History of 8 Key Events That Shaped Baseball"

April 6: "Benchclearing: Baseball's Greatest Fights and Riots"

April 7: "The Code: Baseball's Unwritten Rules and Its Ignore-at-Your-Own-Risk Code of Conduct"

April 8: "Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies and Everything Else"

April 9: "The 33-Year-Old Rookie: Chris Coste"

April 10: "The Rise and Fall of Dodgertown"

April 11: "Far From Home: Latino Baseball Players in America"

April 12: "We Would Have Played For Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Love"

April 13: "Asterisk: Home Runs, Steroids, and the Rush to Judgment"

April 14: "Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game"

Today: "Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective"

The book: "Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective"

The author: Mark Vancil and Al Santasiere

How to find it: Rare Air Books, 245 pages, $50

Where we'd go looking for it: Online at at www.yankees.com would seem to be approrpriate. But we couldn't find it. Instead, it's going for $40 at Powells online bookstore.

The scoop: You'll come across maybe a half-dozen Yankee Stadium remembrance books this year, as the House That Steinbrenner Rebuilt is about to stage its final season, replaced by a bigger, more revenue-generating House That A-Rod Will Break the MLB Career Home Run Record In. They hope.
The team is careful to note that this is the only book of its kind officially licensed by the New York Yankees, complete with an introduction by George Steinbrenner, a foreword by Rudy Giuliani, and more than 150 photographs, many never before published, that show Paul McCartney, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, presidents Clinton and Bush among the patrons. ... how about a shot of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe up in a club box in '61. There are shots behind-the-scenes of the press box, the owner's office, Joe Torre's old manager's office, the dugouts, the monuments.
It not only chronicles all the baseball ever played there, but also NFL games, college football, boxing, Papal visits, 9/11 ceremonies, Billy Graham revivals, rock concerts. All within that frieze white ring around the roof, which gave it its distinct accent.
With that $50 price tag, it better deliver. And it does. It's more than a coffee-table book. It's the size of a coffee table.

How it goes down in the scorebook: A Mantle-like shot heading over the right-field roof.

Even more on this subject: Yankee Stadium history books will be the rage, even moreso come October when fans realize the place will be torn down. These books will have the leg up on the late rush:

ESPN Films announced today it has a deal to co-produce the film that plans to tell the story of how Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson teammed up to break baseball’s color barrier in the late 1940s.

Robert Redford, who will produce the flick (currently untitled) with Tracy Falco, Howard and Karen Baldwin and Andrew Cohen, will play the part of Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers GM who brought Robinson in for The Great Experiment.

This is the first project of ESPN hooking up with Creative Artists Agency. ESPN will, according to its release, "lend its sports storytelling knowledge and expertise to the production."

Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, has approved the movie, as has Branch Rickey Jr. and MLB.

The news comes as the Dodgers prepare for Tuesday ceremonies at Dodger Stadium to commemorate the 61st anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier. All players will wear No. 42 again, actor Lou Gossett Jr. will emcee the night's event, Don Newcombe will throw ou tthe first pitch, and Nicolette Robinson will sing God Bless America. Nicolette Robinson is one of one of 11 Jackie Robinson Scholars who will be recognized during pregame ceremonies. The Dodgers are giving out Robinson No. 42 T-shirts out to kids Tuesday night as well.

The book: "Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game"

The author: George Vecsey

How to find it: Modern Library Chronicles, $14, 272 pages.

Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's online bookstore says they've got a couple in stock. Also at the Modern Library Chronicles website.

The scoop: It's a paperback version of a 2006 hardbound book from the New York Times columnist, a convient way to carry around a history of the game that you're not likely to find in any other printed word by some long-winded writer who is more interested in his pontificaions about the game.
Vecsey, who has covered the game since the early '60s (trivia note: He also wrote "Coal Miner's Daughter" about the life of Loretta Lynn, made into an Oscar-winning film), is a true Brooklyn Dodger fan who admired Stan Musial's approach to the game -- always smiling, playing consistent, somewhat overshadowed by all the stars in New York.
This is hardly a bunch of dusted-off columns -- it's a true baseball history book, written in a narrative that's easly to absorb, but researched enough so that there's 44 reference books cited in the back, along with 12 pages of notes, detailing where facts came for each of the 20 chapters.
In the first chapter on "Six Degrees," Vecsey embraces the fact that today's game can be traced to almost anything that's happened to it in the past, and fans easily make that connection.
"I could get mawkish," he writes, "and declare that the sport today has gone to hell because of a) money or b) television or c) the owners or d) the players, but the truth is, today's players are consistent and familiar to us -- our national sports theatre, our knights and louts and fallen angels, our saints and sinners, our samurai and shamans. We have known them a long, long time."
How do you not want to read more?

How it goes down in the scorebook: A grand slam, arching from pre-1800s base-ball all the way to today's Selig-strangled sport today.

The book: "Asterisk: Home Runs, Steroids, and the Rush to Judgment"

The author: David Ezra

How to find it: Triumph Books, $24.95, 226 pages

Where we'd go looking for it: Take it up with the folks at Powell's online bookstore.

The scoop: First, know that Ezra, who works for the lawfirm of Berger Kahn, got his Juris Doctor degree from the USC Law Center, was an editor of the Southern California Law Review, maintains an active law practice in Orange County and, in 2005, began serving as a mediator certified in alternative dispute resolution. He's a baseball fan living in Huntington Beach ...
And he's not convinced Barry Bonds took steroids. At least, not by the evidence that the court of public opinion has been asked to consider. Given to a real judge and/or jury, Ezra seems to believe he could win the argument consider the evidence, as he writes, is "shockingly thin and surprisingly flimsy."
It starts with the book, "Game of Shadows," written by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, who broke the story that in a federal investigation of BALCO, Bonds and fellow slugger Jason Giambi had admitted to taking steroids. Ezra writes that Fainaru-Wada and Williams "made a venomous and sustained attack against Bonds."
Ezra writes that anyone has convicted Bonds in their own minds "have not yet closely studied the evidence. It isn't their fault. No one is out there compiling evidence to defend Bonds. ... If a fair-minded person looks at that so-called evidence, it is hard to see it as anything but surprisingly weak."
Ezra then goes on to break down those arguments based on how Bonds "looks," how his statistics have increased, how convenient it was that grand jury testimony was leaked, former girlfriend Kimberly Bell's accusations and other "innuendo and speculation by those who dislike him." Ezra also argues in the closing chapter for Bonds' inclusion in the Hall of Fame in his first year of selection.
If Bonds is eventually going to trial for perjury, he might to have Ezra on his legal team.

How it goes down in the scorebook: *

Yes, I am fearful of the foot-long Monst-ah Dog that they sell at Clear Channel Stadium (formerly The Hanger), home of the Lancaster JetHawks. Just look at that creation.
But I did consume it. Nearly in six bites.
In case you wondered just which pro baseball team in the area had the best hot dog menu, as we've tried to sample in today's Daily News column, we present this as evidence:

THE LANCASTER JETHAWKS:
(All dogs from Hebrew National)

$7.25: Chili-cheese burrito dog (Half-pound dog, chili, cheddar and jack cheese, onions, wrapped in a flour tortilla)
$6.25: Nacho Grande dog (Quarter-pound dog, toasted bun, nacho cheese, fresh salsa, jalapenos, topped with tortilla chips)
$6.00: The Monst-ah dog (12-inch all-beef half-pound dog, onions, mustard, sauerkraut)
$4.50: The Hangar Dog (named for what the stadium used to be called, with chili and cheese)
$4.50: Cheesy Jumbo Dog
$4.00: KB's Jumbo Dog
$4.00: Brautwurst (with onions and peppers)
$4.00: Polish sausage (with onions and peppers)
$2.75: Junior KaBoom Dog
$2.25: Corn dog

DODGER STADIUM:
(All dogs from Farmer John):

$11.50: 1/2-pound Andouille Sausage
$6.75: Louisiana Hot Sausage
$6.75: Sweet Italian Sausage
$6.75: Bavarian Bratwurst
$6.50: Foot Long Corn Dog
$6.50: Turkey Dog
$5.75: Super Dodger Dog
$5.25: Picante Dog
$5.00: Dodger Dog
(And for the record, here's the contents of a Dodger Dog, which you can buy at the market -- $3.49 for a package of six: 240 calories per weiner (200 calories from fat); 22 grams of fat, 45 mg cholestrol, 860 mg sodium, 2g carbohydrate, 2g sugar, 8g protein ... from pork, water, salt, corn syrup, dextrose, natural flavorings, potassium lactate, sugar, sodium phosphates, sodium diacetate, sodium erthorbate, oleoresin paprika and sodium nitrite.)

ANGEL STADIUM:
(All dogs from Farmer John):

$7.50: The All Star Dog
$5.50: The Grand Slam Dog
$4.50: The Super Dog
$3.00: Regular hot dog (all four above with mustard, ketchup, onions and jalapenos for condiments)
$7.00: Italian sausage
$7.00: Brautwurst sausage
$7.00: Louisiana hot sausage (the last three with grilled onions, bell peppers and sauerkraut)

Got a favorite dog? What's in it for you?

If you notice a bunch more cameras poised on Kobe Bryant during today's Lakers-San Antonio telecast from Staples Center, it's Spike Lee's fault.

The famed director (and New York Knicks fan) will spend the entire day with the Lakers star, documenting his every move as part of an ESPN Films project.

Starting early this morning, Lee plans to follow Bryant around at home going through his routine before heading out to the game. Lee then rides along in the car to the contest, doing an hour-long interview in the process. He’ll tag along as Bryant does the pre-game stuff in the locker room, and then plays the contest.
ABC is already using 14 cameras to cover the game (12:30 p.m., Channel 7); Lee has 17 additional cameras just to smother Bryant.

What’ll be the greater number: Lenses focused on Bryant, or his made field-goals?

Last month, when ESPN Films was formed, it was announced that 30 filmmakers would embark on a project called "30/30," each of them doing a one-hour sports-themed documentary about whatever they wanted to that would begin airing in late 2009 and run through 2010 as part of ESPN's 30th anniversary. L.A.-based producer Mike Tollin is heading that project, and will also do a documentary about the short life of the United States Football League.

The book: "We Would Have Played For Nothing: Baseball Stars of the 1950s and 1960s Talk About the Game They Love"

The author: Fay Vincent

How to find it: Simon & Schuster, 327 pages, $25

Where we'd go looking for it: We'll go with Powell's online bookstore.

The scoop: Baseball's former commissioner has a followup to his 2006 book, "The Only Game in Town: Baseball Stars of the 1930s and 1940s Talk about the Game They Loved," and we can only surmise there's another one a couple years from now that covers the 1970s and 1980s.

Its an offshoot of something called the Baseball Oral History Project, where Vincent interviews 11 former players on videotape and then had their stories transcribed. The project is financed by Herb and Vincent Allen, of the investment banking firm Allen & Company, who have donated all sales proceeds to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Vincent says his work is simply following the template set by Lawrence Ritter when he recorded interviews for his book, "The Glory of Their Times."

As for the title, "We Would Have Played for Free," we're not sure which player said it, even after reading through everyone's testimonial. It's kind of ironic anyway. Vincent dedicates the book to Marvin Miller, the former head of the players' union who almost single-handedly caused salaries to skyrocket during his tenure. Second, almost all the players interviewed speak with some astonishment about how little they were paid at the time during their careers.

Frank Robinson, who became baseball's first black manager in 1975 with the Cleveland Indians, discloses he was paid only $20,000 to do that job. He already had a player's contract for $180,000, and GM Phil Seghi said he could only give him $200,000 total. Robinson, a player-manager, reluctantly accepted because he knew if he turned it down, it would be used against any future black managerial hirings -- if Robinson turned it down, who else is qualified?

Former Dodgers pitcher Carl Erskine says he believes Robinson wouldn't have been the first black manager had Roy Campanella not been permanently disabled by his car accident that paralyized him in 1957.

Billy Williams also talks about sitting out five days during spring training because the Chicago Cubs wouldn't give him a $100,000 contract for the 1971 season, the year after he hit .322 with 42 homers and 129 RBI -- all three career best single-season numbers.

The others who contribute with stories are former Dodgers Duke Snider and Ralph Branca , former YankeesWhitey Ford, former New York Giants and Angels manager Bill Rigney, plus Brooks Robinson, Robin Roberts, Lew Burdette and Harmon Killebrew.

How it goes down in the scorebook: A ringing double off the right-field tin wall at Ebbets Field.

Associated Press

Some of college basketball’s brightest stars, including UCLA's Kevin Love, will be featured in Beastie Boy Adam Yauch’s new documentary, “Gunnin’ for That No. 1 Spot," that will debut later this month.
And while it’s less than two years since he followed the then-high school players for a week, Yauch still can’t get over how much they’ve changed.
“They already look different, and I think it will be really interesting to look at this doc five or 10 years from now and see these guys when they were high school students. There’s a good chance that several of them may be superstars in the NBA,” Yauch told The Associated Press in an interview this week. “They were like babies in this picture.”
Yauch took his camera to Harlem’s famed Rucker Park, made famous by streetballers, in September 2006 to document some of the nation’s top high school talent, who were playing in an event there.
Yauch said he was struck by how the players — who also included Jerryd Bayless of Arizona, Donte Green of Syracuse and Kyle Singler of Duke — could act like kids one minute, yet live in such an adult world.
“They have this infrastructure around them, and they are being groomed for stardom,” he said.
“When I was in high school I wasn’t getting the quantity of media that these guys are,” he said. “But it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Yauch, 43, said the documentary, which premieres April 28 at the Tribeca Film Festival, doesn’t make a judgment on the world where the precocious teens lived, but does give viewers a glimpse into it. He added: “The people around these kids really do care about them.”
“Gunnin’ for That No. 1 Spot” is slated for wide release June 27.

Or is it the other way around?
Whatever side you care to believe, Bryant Gumbel's days of stumbling around as a play-by-play man on NFL Network Thursday and Saturday night games is done, both parties announced this afternoon.
The Net is going with the story that "Gumbel has decided to give up his duties" after two seasons.
Good decision.
“I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to call NFL Network games the past two years, which was a new experience for me,” said Gumbel in a statement. “But we've agreed that we'd all be better served going in different directions. There are a lot of talented people at NFL Network. I thank them, I wish them well, and I have no doubt that they will be very successful going forward.”
We are correct, on so many levels.
Cris Collinsworth, however, stays.
“We appreciate everything Bryant did in helping us launch our NFL Network game telecasts,” said NFL Network pres and CEO Steve Bornstein. “Bryant helped create interest in our first foray into televising NFL regular-season games. He is one of the great broadcasters of our time and we are honored to have worked with him.”
He may have created interest, but he hardly created any memories.
In other words, stick to your HBO desk job, my friend.
Again, you can see Gumbel going on-one-one -- literally -- with Barack Obama on the Tuesday episode of HBO's "Real Sports." Gumbel decides to play the Democratic presidental candidate in a basketball game. Too bad it wasn't bowling.

The subject of Sunday's "The Writing's On (and off) The Wall" is "Hot Dog Nation" -- particularily, about 10 choices of dogs served up by the Red Sox's Single-A Lancaster JetHawks and how their menu stacks up against the major-league wieners at "other" parks around Southern California.

Start with a half-pound hot dog, topped with chili, cheddar and jack cheese and onions and wrapped in a flour tortilla -- the chili-cheese burrito dog, $7.25. It's part of "Senor KaBoom's Cantina" Mexican food menu that has no fast-food sponsor logo attached to it. ... imagine that.
Oh, and there's a $6.25 Nacho Grande Dog: A quarterpounder on a toasted bun topped with nacho cheese, salsa, jalapenos and topped with crushed tortilla chips.

Ole.

Although, that Monstah Dog ain't bad: A foot-long, all beef, with kraut, mustard and onions, for just $6.... It would make the guys at Pinks' blush.

That's a hot dog, from the "Wiener Würstchen," which means Viennese sausage. And translates to baseball in any language.

You say Dodger Dog, we say we'll see ya in Lancaster.

The book: "Far From Home: Latino Baseball Players in America"

The author: Tim Wendel, with photographs by Jose Luis Villegas

How to find it: National Geographic Society and MLB, 160 pages, $28

Where we'd go looking for it: On the National Geographic store, under cultural books. And at Wendel's website.

The scoop: It's one of the most beautiful pieces of literature about baseball we've ever held in our hands, both photographically and editorially. It's no wonder that the National Geographic Society has backed this project. It's first class all the way.
Wendel, who began covering the MLB in the Bay Area in the mid 1980s, writes about how former Oakland A's manager Tony La Russa , who grew up in a Spanish-speaking home in Tampa, Fla., taught him that "assumption is the mother of all screw-ups," because you can't assume Latino ballplayers exist to the extent that they do on the MLB level is because, as kids, they had no money for expensive toys and all they could do is play ball year around in the warm climate. There's a far more extensive history and a close-knit community that makes more sense. Baseball is an important part of the community.
And history does go further back in the big-leagues than Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947. One of the book's first striking photos is that of Adolfo "Dolf" Luque, the pride of Havana, Cuba, who pitched for 20 years at the major league level, including the Brooklyn Dodgers, and leading the league with 27 victories and a 1.93 ERA in 1923 with the Cincinnati Reds.
The book revisits Martin Dihigo, a Cuban-born player who is in four Hall of Fames, but was denied a spot on a U.S. big-league roster; Roberto Clemente and his Puerto Rican roots; the Alou brothers and their putting the Dominican Republic on the map, along with Manny Mota; and Fernando Valenzuela, who did the same for Mexico.
It's interesting to see photographs of Nomar Garciaparra, born and raised in Whitter, and Alex Rodriguez interspersed with Juan Marichal, Vladimir Guerrero or Rod Carew, of Panama, But consider Garciaparra's lineage: He's the cousin of Arturo Javier Ledesma, a Mexican soccer player who currently plays for Club Deportivo Guadalajara. His uncle is legendary Mexican soccer goalkeeper, Javier "Zully" Ledesma.
A four-page timeline at the back of the book also creates a simple context of the Latino players' rise in the game, starting in 1864 with Nemesio Guillo, a Cuban studying in the U.S. who brings the first bat and ball home to Cuba.

How it goes down in the scorebook: Viva Beiosbol.

So this truck was trying to pass David Feherty on a two-lane highway and all of the sudden ...
Aw, forget it.
"All I know is that so many people have asked me to recount what happened, I’m tired of hearing it," says the CBS golf reporter. "I’m thinking about just building some grandstands near the place where it happened and doing an reenactment.”

Following up on the media column today that recounts what did happen to Feherty, and how he's coping with the pollen floating around at the Augusta National this weekend during the Masters' coverage, we've got more notes that somehow seem worthy of more exposure:

** GOLF
==Jim Nantz, hot off of using the phrase "Rock Chalk Championship!" to sum up Kansas' overtime victory over Memphis in the NCAA basketball championship game earlier this week, has to put more memorable words together to punctuate the pictures again at Augusta this weekend.

Does he script it, as some may contend? He's not really saying.

"I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to put the right caption and the right story and the right description of what this means within that player's heart," Nantz said before this weekend's event started. "They have dreamt of that moment since they were a little boy and they wanted to go the Augusta and win there. And I do feel like I owe it to them to be on top of my game and be able to tell their story in an accurate fashion, to be able to reflect exactly what they are feeling at that moment.

"I have stories about certain players, anecdotal stuff that I’ve never used. I’m holding it back for the thought that one day they might win the Masters and if that moment arrives on Sunday, I’m going to tell a story that has never been told before."

Another story that Nantz wants to tell is one in a new book, "Always By My Side: A Father's Grace and a Sports Journey Unlike Any Other" (Gotham, 320 pages, $25), which officially hits the bookstores in early May, in time for Father's Day gift-giving. Along with crediting his father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease now, for much of his success, Nantz also includes nice tributes to Dick Enberg, Curt Gowdy, Jim McKay, Chris Schenkel, Pat Summerall and Jack Whitaker.

(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

That's tennis player Venus Williams, walking with PGA Tour pro Hank Kuehne during the first round of the 2008 Masters at Augusta on Thursday. Hank's brother, Trip, is playing in the event as an amateur. Hank also seems to be playing the field. Is that her right hand locked up with his left hand below the frame?

One of the things that the folks who run the Masters are trying this year, at least giving the appearance that they're open minded, is a link called "Golf Goes Worldwide," on their official website, which asks anyone to give an idea of how to expand the sport. Ideas can be submitted in English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese and Korean until June 1.
Some of the suggestions already posted:

"Ask golf courses to charge kids half-price during the week in the summer. It’s usually not busy then and a golf course is a safe, fun place for youngsters." -- Kevin V, NC, United States

"Make the hole bigger. If more putts fall, kids will want to play again." -- Joe M, GA, United States

"Everyone has heard of 'take your kid to work' day. I think that golf courses could adopt a day where they can have 'take your kid to golf' day. All tee times would require a kid in the group. All kids play for free." -- Scott, GA, United States

"Great Idea, keep it to 9 holes for the kids, and make the holes quite short, so they are not just trying to hit the ball as far as possible, teach them putting and shot making." --James B, United Kingdom

"I started my son swinging a golf club when he was very young (when he could stand by himself). Unfortunately, some of our local courses would not let him play until he was 10 years old. They need to change, and allow young players on the course. (Even if it is later in the day)" -- David Y, MD, United States

"I think there should be more clinics around for youngsters, with little or no fees" -- Michael K, Canada

The book: "The Rise And Fall of Dodgertown: 60 Years of Baseball in Vero Beach"

The author: Rody Johnson

How to find it: University Press of Florida, 302 pages, $24.95

Where we'd go looking for it: We're partial to Powell's online store. But it's also on the publisher's website.

The scoop: Johnson considers himself a lifelong Dodgers fan, inheriting his Aunt Lil's spring-training season tickets five rows behind the dugout. He was at Vero Beach for the first spring training in 1948. He was there to see the team leave for the last time a few weeks ago.
His tone changes from melancholy to somewhat miserable when he writes of the team-city relationship in the post-O'Malley ownership, one that's been passed from Rupert Murdoch to Frank McCourt. The team played the city as a bargaining chip whenever it could threatened to move to Arizona -- which is finally has. But that was hardly the only time friction arose between Vero and the franchise.
"In earlier days, availability of apartments created tensions, integration brought stresses and the Federal Aviation Administration threatened to throw the Dodgers off airport property," Johnson documents.
But even Vero Beach was at fault. It was losing its small-town charm when a Wal-Mart Super Center and a Disney resort were built in the limits.
The Dodgers played in Vero longer than they'd been at either Ebbets Field or Dodger Stadium in L.A. And Johnson just wants to make sure everyone realized that when it will be left behind next year for a new spring facility in Glendale, Ariz.
The book is not done without the Dodgers' blessing. Team historian Mark Langill is credited with providing a read of the early manuscript and providing photographs. And the Daily News' Tony Jackson is cited for helping with access protocol to players and coaches. The index also notes contributions by the Daily News' Kevin Modesti for an interview he did with Peter O'Malley.

How it goes down in the scorebook: E-McCourt.

CBS golf course reporter David Feherty is the subject of Friday's media column, as he talks about surviving a brutal bike accident nearly a month ago when he was sideswiped by a truck in Dallas, and he ended up with three broken ribs and a punctured lung, as it was reported by the wire services. As long as he doesn't sneeze, he'll be fine, he says. Thankfully, Feherty won't be walking the course during the network's coverage of the Masters this weekend -- the Augusta fuddy duddies don't allow a course reporter for their event.

The book: "The 33-Year-Old Rookie: How I Finally Made It to the Big Leagues After 11 Years in the Minors"

The author: Chris Coste, Philadelphia Phillies catcher

How to find it: Ballantine Books, $25, 199 pages

Where we'd go looking for it: He's got links to Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble off his official website.

The scoop: They just love them "Rocky" stories in Philadelphia, don't they? Coste plays right into the myth of the underdog finally getting his shot on center stage. And if there was ever a Phillies player who did this before, too bad. They didn't write a book about.
Vince Papale of "Invincible" fame writes on the book jacket: "If you have an impossible dream and want to see a man and family who paid the price to make theirs come true, you have to read this book."
His current listing on the Baseball-Reference.com , which shows simply that he played 65 games in 2006, is all we'd know about him before this book.
After 3,688 at bats in 983 minor-league games, Coste finally got the call up that year. He said he had been sort of pigeon-holed as a utility player, and not strong enough to be a big-league catcher, until he'd finally convinced the Phillies he could call a game behind the plate.
"For me ... the most exciting call ame from ESPN's 'Cold Pizza,' asking me to come on the show as a guest," Coste writes. "Now I'd watched 'Cold Pizza' practically every day for years, so to receive an invitation like that was totally awesome."
Which shows you how mixed up the kid really was.
Coste homered in his first swing of the 2008 season last week. So maybe he's got a future in this game after all. And a movie script, unless Jim Morris has some copyright to it.

How it goes down in the scorebook: A tag-out at the plate.

It happens every year about this time, and sometimes you find out too late to do anything about it. Get on the ball this time.
Angels manager Mike Scioscia and his Amateur Baseball Development Group has a clinic set for Saturday, April 19 at Conejo Creek Ballpark (1300 E. Janss Road, Thousand Oaks) from 10:30 a.m. until noon. Fundamentals will be stressed. Kids are required, but they don't have to be in full workout gear.
Those who participate can also bring their Angels gear, and Sciocia will scribble on it. Angels players, coaches and broadcasters are expected to be there as well with Sharpies to ruin perfectly good hats, shirts and gloves with their signatures.
For directions: Off the 101 W, take the 23 N, exit Janss Road, go east (right), take the first right into a driveway before the school district offices and follow signs for parking.
More info at the Amateur Baseball Development Group website.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This Saturday, the Angels are trying to get rid of a few things.
The team's first ever yard sale, open to the public, starts at 10 a.m. (with season-seat holders getting first crack at the loot starting at 9 a.m.). The team will put out memorabilia such as stadium banners, game-used jerseys and helmets, T-shirts, baseballs, books, programs ... whatever else is collecting dust in their garage ... some of Terry Smith's game-used phrases ... all to benefit the Angels Baseball Foundation.
The team requires that all purchases be made in cash only.
It'll all take place under the giant hats in front of the home-plate gate.

And if your neighbor, Weird-Dude Charley, shows up on your porch hoping to watch Stanley Cup playoff games with you, you'll know what to tell him before sending him back home (with a reference to the local pharmacy):

==Versus starts Wednesday with Ottawa-Pittsburgh (4 p.m.), followed by Calgary-San Jose (7 p.m.) If the Ducks pop up on Versus' schedule, it'll be blacked out, and you'll find 'em on FSN West.
The Versus schedule:
Wednesday: Ottawa at Pittsburgh, Game 1 (4 p.m.): Calgary at San Jose, Game 1 (7 p.m.)
Thursday: Nashville at Detroit, Game 1 (4 p.m.); Dallas at Anaheim, Game 1 (7 p.m.)
Friday: Philadelphia at Washington, Game 1 (4 p.m.); Colorado at Minnesota, Game 2 (6:30 p.m., joined in progress)
Saturday: Boston at Montreal, Game 2 (4 p.m.); Dallas at Anaheim, Game 2 (7 p.m.)
Sunday: New Jersey at N.Y. Rangers, Game 3 (4 p.m.); San Jose at Calgary, Game 3 (7 p.m.)
Monday: Detroit at Nashville, Game 3 (4:30 p.m.); Minnesota at Colorado, Game 3, (7 p.m.)
April 15: Washington at Philadelphia, Game 3 (4 p.m.); Minnesota at Colorado, Game 4 (7 p.m.)
April 16: New Jersey at N.Y. Rangers, Game 4 (4 p.m.); Detroit at Nashville, Game 4 (6:30 p.m., joined in progress)
April 17: Washington at Philadelphia, Game 4 (4 p.m.); Calgary at San Jose, Game 5* (7 p.m.)
April 18: Nashville at Detroit, Game 5* (4:30 p.m.); Dallas at Anaheim, Game 5* (7:30 p.m.)
April 19: Ottawa at Pittsburgh, Game 5* (TBD); Minnesota at Colorado, Game 6* (TBD)
April 20: New Jersey at N.Y. Rangers, Game 6* (TBD); San Jose at Calgary, Game 6* (TBD)
April 21: Washington at Philadelphia, Game 6* (TBD)
April 22: Game to be determined.

==NBC starts with a Saturday-Sunday doubleheader and has up to 15 games through the playoffs and final.
The first two:
Nashville at Detroit, Game 2 (Saturday, 11 a.m.)
Philadelphia at Washington, Game 2 (Sunday, 11 a.m.)

The rest:
Saturday, April 19: Philadelphia at Washington, Game 5* (10 a.m.)
Sunday, April 20: Detroit at Nashville, Game 6* (noon)
Conference semis:
Saturday, April 26, noon; Sunday, April 27, 11 a.m.
Saturday, May 3, 10 a.m.; Sunday, May 4, 11 a.m.
Conference finals:
Saturday, May 17, 10:30 a.m.; Sunday, May 18, noon
Stanley Cup Finals (all games starting with Game 3)

The book: "Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies and Everything Else"

The author: Rob Neyer

How to find it: Fireside Books, 331 pages, $16.

Where we'd go looking for it: On Rob Neyer's website, he'll direct you to Amazon.com.

The scoop: They say Neyer has written more words for ESPN.com than anyone. That's a fact we'll believe. But it's something Neyer himself would probably begin researching to see if it's either true, half-true, or completely wrong.
That's what we've always liked about his passion for baseball stories. Sometimes, you like to leave well enough alone and enjoy the story for what it is. But then you gotta say: C'mon, did that really happen.
That's what the latest edition of Neyer's "Big Books" series gets into. Neyer will stumble on a story in a book, magazine or newspaper and think: For real? And in the pursuit of the truth, other truths will emerge that give even more context to that event, and others related to it.
A sample:

Tommy Lasorda claims that, in the last game he ever pitched professionally, in 1960 for the Montreal Royals, he prayed to God late in a game against Buffalo, when the bases were loaded and no one was out.
"Lord, I'm in a jam here, and any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated," he wrote in his 1985 book, "The Artful Dodger."

He goes to explain how the batter jerked a ball down the third-base line. Third baseman George Risley leaped for it, but it bounced off his glove. Shortstop Jerry Snyder then dove and backhanded it, catching it as he rolled on his back. He then flipped the ball to second base, and the second baseman stepped on the bag for the second out. He then threw to first -- triple play.
"I'd played 13 summers and 11 winters of professional baseball and had never before been involved in a triple play," Lasorda wrote. "That turned out to be the last game I ever pitched."

Now, to Neyer, whose research came from the July 4 edition of the Montreal Gazette: It happened against Rochester. It wasn't late in the game; it was the second inning. The bases weren't loaded, it was first and second.

Otherwise, true story. Lasorda went the distance, the Royals won, he was released on July 9, the Dodgers made him a scout.

Among the other stores Neyer tries to resolve:
=What did Steve Garvey actually say to an umpire to get himself ejected for the first time in 1986 with the San Diego Padres?
=Did Maury Wills revolutionize the game with his base-stealing prowess in the 1960s, as he claimed?
=Did Don Drysdale really say to Walter Alston, "I bet you wish I was Jewish, too," after the Minnesota Twins knocked him out of Game 1 of the 1965 World Series -- a game Sandy Koufax didn't pitch in because it was Yom Kippur?
Read it for yourself and decide.

Other Neyer books:
"Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time" with Eddie Epstein
"Feeding the Green Monster"
"Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups"
"The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers" with Bill James
"Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Blunders"

How it goes down in the scorebook: A called shot, a la Babe Ruth (or did that really happen)?

A guide to help you navigate through all that's the Masters, starting with Wednesday's Par 3 tournament:

===CABLE:
ESPN is on board for the first time, replacing the USA Network, and will carry the Par 3 event (Wednesday, noon to 2 p.m.), which has never been televised before.
Mike Tirico commandeers the host role from the network's end, with Scott Van Pelt and Andy North hanging around as well. Interesting how Tirico will add some color to the event. Remember an African-American golf broadcaster with such a high profile at the Masters before?
"It drives me nuts that race can be seen as so important. … I get uncomfortable and disappointed when race, especially in sports, becomes the defining topic," Tirico told USA Today recenty.
As for the look of the coverage: "I don't think you'll be saying, 'Boy, this doesn't seem like an ESPN event,' or 'Boy, this does seem like an ESPN event'," said John Wildhack, ESPN's executive vice president for programming and acquisitions. "It's the Masters. Some things trump everything else."
ESPN Deportes also has the first and second round in Spanish to many countries around the world.
Some have tried to make a story out of the fact that Chris Berman isn't part of ESPN's coverage. Speculation is that the Masters people didn't want him clowning it up. For the record, ESPN says he's too busy preparing for the NFL Draft. Nice spin move.
ESPN has the first and second round coverage (1 to 4 p.m. Thursday and Friday; reaired from 5 to 8 p.m.) CBS will produce the telecasts using the entire crew: Jim Nantz, Nick Faldo, Peter Oosterhuis, Verne Lundquist, David Feherty, Bill Macatee, Peter Kostis and Ian Baker-Finch.
Lance Barrow and David Winner produce it, with Steve Milton and Bob Matia directing.

==OVER THE AIR TV:
CBS, on board for the 53rd year in a row, has the third (Saturday, 12:30 to 4 p.m.) and final round (11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.).
Nantz is there for the 23rd consecutive year in Butler Cabin. Faldo is the lead analyst at 18.
Around the course: Baker-Finch (11th and 12th holes), Kostis (13th), Macatee (14th), Feherty (15th), Lundquist (16th) and Oosterhuis (17th).
The Thursday and Friday night highlights shows with Nantz and Feherty air from 11:35 to 11:50 p.m. each night, pushing David Letterman back.

==ONLINE:
ESPN360.com will have all of ESPN's coverage online for Thursday and Friday. Then there is 48 hours of live original streaming video planned for all four rounds. Bobby Clampett and Billy Kratzert are with Ian Eagle are at Amen Corner, plus "15 & 16 Live" on www.CBSSports.com and www.masters.org. Amen Corner cameras operate from 7:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 8:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The "15 & 16 Live" cameras run from 8:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and 9:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
The "Masters Extra" coverage online: noon to 1 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Saturday and 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Sunday.

==RADIO:
XM Satellite devotes Channel 146 to the tournament. Brian Katrek will host the broadcast and John Maginnes will be the lead analyst. Unfortunately, Jim Gray is employed for interviews.

==SPECIALS:
CBS had "Jim Nantz Remembers Augusta: The 1978 Masters" (Sunday, 10:30 a.m.). It's 30 years after Gary Player won, and the first time the round is replayed on TV.
ESPN Classic has a 24-hour Masters tribute featuring the official Masters films starting Wednesday at 1 p.m. leading into the first-round coverage Thursday on ESPN.

The book: "The Code: Baseball's Unwritten Rules and Its Ignore-at-Your-Own-Risk Code of Conduct"

The author: Ross Bernstein

How to find it: Triumph Books, 240 pages, $22.95

Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's online book store.

The scoop: The DaVinci Code may be easier to crack than what could lead to someone's head getting cracked open for doing the wrong thing.
With the book cover picture reflecting on our review of Day 6's "Benchclearing," this was a nice punchy segway.

Two years ago, Bernstein wrote a similar book on the NHL's "code," with a forward by Marty McSorley, after doing 50 interviews with various NHL folk. So we accept that Bernstein, a former relief pitcher for a Minnesota pick-up team who earned the nickname "Nook" because of drilling a few hitters unintentionally, is dialed in here as well. He says he talked to more than 75 current and former players, managers and coaches, plus media people.
"Some players opened up and poured their guts out," Bernstein writes, "while others chose to stay off the record. That's cool ... I know the first rule of Fight Club is 'There is no Fight Club.'"

Many say the code is about playing the game "the right way," which often involves not showing up another player, and it's a players' duty to enforce that. Step off wrong, and you'll get punished within the fraternity.

When do you retaliate? When do you join a bench-clearing brawl? What's the right way to break up a double play? How do you celebrate a home run? When do you play hurt? Can you steal signs? When do you charge the mound (ask Ventura about Aug. 4, 1993, when he got the two-game suspension for getting pounded by Ryan)?

Because you're getting information first hand from those who've played, it's much more credible than if it's a writer just speculating.

New Angels center fielder Torii Hunter, in one of the forwards, says it this way: "If my manager tells me to take out the second baseman on a hard slide and I don't do it, then I should get punished accordingly. I had at least better try to do it and make it look good, or I am going to be in the doghouse.... It's not personal, it's just business. That is just the way it goes down sometimes. Hey, that's the code."

Former Angels outfielder Dave Winfield takes it a step further: "Steroids are definitely a violation of the code. Players are looking for any way to enhance their performance, though, which ultimately enhances their paychecks. There are people out there who are willing to break the law if they think that they can get away with it, and some of them are compensated handsomely for cheating, which is really sad in my opinion."

You always hear that there are many unwritten rules in baseball. So, does the fact that they're now written in this book make things any clearer? Bernstein includes an entire page (156) reprinting the 30 unwritten rules of baseball, according to Baseball Digest, in 1986. It's more of a general rule or two about how the game is played, not so much how to react to certain situations.

Plus, as Rob Dibble points out in his forward, the code has changed. Player are afraid of getting hurt or suspended or fined, so it's "the code of ethics versus the old school code of honor -- which is about protecting your teammates."

How it goes down in the scorebook: HPB.

As a follow up to today's column flogging Jose Canseco and his new book, "Vindicated," -- and here's the link to that Pat Jordan piece on trying to find him for an interview -- we wanted to catch everyone up on our really lame cool "30 Books in 30 Days of April" series -- that is, trying to give some quick reviews of 30 books about the sport that have sprung this spring.
Someone has to sort through this finely worded mess. We take the cause up with glassy eyes.

The series so far:
April 1: "101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out"
April 2: "Baseball's Greatest Quotations: An Illustrated Treasury of Baseball Quotations and Historical Lore"
April 3: "The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia: Fifth Edition"
April 4: "My Bat Boy Days: Lessons I Learned from the Boys of Summer" by Steve Garvey
April 5: "Change Up: An Oral History of 8 Key Events That Shaped Baseball"
Today: "Benchclearing: Baseball's Greatest Fights and Riots"
Monday: "The Code: Baseball's Unwritten Rules and Its Ignore-at-Your-Own-Risk Code of Conduct"
Tuesday: "Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends"
Wednesday: "The 33-Year-Old Rookie: Chris Coste"
Thursday: "The Rise and Fall of Dodgertown"

The book: "Benchclearing: Baseball's Greatest Fights and Riots"

The author: Spike Vrusho

How to find it: Globe Pequot Press (Lyons Press), 304 pages, $16.95

Where we'd go looking for it: Our trusted friends at Powell's online bookstore.

The scoop: That meyhem depicted on the cover had us originally thinking it was from the Dodgers' bruhaha at Wrigley Field back in 2000, when a fan down in the bullpen and tried to run off with Chad Kreuter's hat. Before you knew it, coaches John Shelby and Rick Dempsey were heading into the stands, with a bunch of other players right behind them, leading to 16 players and three coaches suspended.

Upon further review, it looks more like the Dodgers tangling with the Angels, back with the Halos had those weird blue jerseys and hats. We spot Mike Piazza at the bottom, pitching coach Dave Wallace in the middle, hitting coach Reggie Smith in front ... When was this? The book doesn't really shed much more light on it. But it made for one intense cover.

the ....
the ............
the ....................
lead.

We've waited a couple of days to even write about this because we want to give a journalist credit when it's due. A scoop ain't a scoop until the guy writing it says so ..

Dang it, we can't wait any longer.
It was Pete Arbogast's Arboblather Arboblog of April 2.
Let's recap ....

He's at pro day at USC ... blah, blah ...
He says he sees "BOTH Ed Oregon and Brian Kennedy at practice yesterday!"
(Probably means Orgeron, but, you know ... and Kennedy, his meal ticket ... )

A much needed win for baseball last night ... yadda, yadda, yadda...

Men's tennis ... blah, blah....

Oh, here it is, some 200-plus words in:
By the way, as I said on the show yesterday, highly credible sources have corroborated each other to me directly (now that’s the way it is SUPPOSED to be done) so don’t let anyone else say they broke the story: OJ Mayo is going to leave school after the spring semester is over, and will shortly be making himself eligible for the NBA draft. Done.

So, is this breaking news? He has "highly credible sources" telling him this "directly" -- the way we journalists do it, by the way ....
We promise when Mayo does decide to leave, we will go back to this and say: Oh, we already knew about this. Why give us old news. Arbo was all over it.
As usual.

"Taj Gibson is most likely staying at USC."

Wait, that's more news? We're not sure. It doesn't seem to be corroborated.
Stay tuned.

The book: "Change Up: An Oral History of 8 Key Events That Shaped Baseball"

The authors: Larry Burke and Peter Thomas Fornatale, with Jim Baker

How to find it: Rodale Press, 290 pages, $24.95

Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's online book store.

The scoop: Not that Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947 wasn't a big deal, but there have been plenty of books, movies, documentaries, etc., written about probably the thing that most changed baseball in its history.
Here, the objective is to look at everything in the last half century -- like the Dodgers and Giants moving to the West Coast. Hasn't that changed the game plenty?
So taking 1958 as a starting point, here are what the authors lay out as the eight things that have, for better or worse, affected the sport's change the most. And not just present it as a doctorate thesis, but do a roundtable discussion with those who watched it and were part of it.
"We believe that, on balance, the changes that have come to baseball over the years are a good thing and that there has never been a better time to be a fan," they write in the intro. "Sure, there are still problems as there always have been, but in many ways, thanks to some of the men in this book, the Golden Age of Baseball is now."
The eight changes:
==Expansion: Specifically, how it created the 1962 Mets, the most famous last-place team in the game's history.
==Latino influence. With discussion from Tony Perez, Luis Tiant, Tony Oliva, Minnie Minoso and David Maraniss, the author of the book, "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero."
==The media: Jim Bouton's book, "Ball Four," blew the hinges off access to players in 1970. Bouton talks about the impact, as well as many of the players in the book.
==The Players' Union: Marvin Miller talks about it, as well as players at the time it all came to a head with Curt Flood's case, such as Joe Torre, and those who benefitted from it, like free agents Joe Rudi and Bobby Grich.
==The Designated Hitter: Ron Bloomberg, the first DH in 1973, leads the discussion, with Oliva, Oscar Gamble, Edgar Martinez, Frank Robinson, Rico Carty. Bud Selig chimes in.
==The first African American manager: That would be Robinson, with Cleveland in 1975, but also players like Jeff Torborg (Robinson's coach, and his successor at Cleveland in '77), Monte Irvin, and New York Times columnist Dave Anderson speak to it.
==Cal Ripken's streak: With Cal, of course, plus brother Billy, Earl Weaver, Miguel Tejada, and Washington Post writer Tom Boswell. Which includes a discussion about how the position of shortstop has become one of a power-hitter these days.
==The Japanese influence: With Ichiro Suzuki, Bobby Valentine, agent Don Nomura (who brough Hideo Nomo to the Dodgers), and author Robert Whiting ("You Gotta Have Wa")

How it goes down in the scorebook: A great catch at the bullpen gate to preserve a late-inning shutout, Clemente style.

By The Associated Press

The Galaxy's David Beckham still earns 50 times Major League Soccer’s average salary, even with it rising 12 percent this year to $129,395.
At $6.5 million in guaranteed income, Beckham makes twice as much as the second-highest-paid player in the league, Chicago’s Cuauhtemoc Blanco ($2,666,778), according to figures released by the league’s players union.
D.C. United’s Marcelo Gallardo was third at $1,874,006, followed by New York’s Juan Pablo Angel ($1,593,750) and Claudio Reyna ($1,265,000), and the Galaxy’s Landon Donovan ($900,000).
Forty-six players earn the league minimum of $33,000. Among developmental players, 30 make
$17,700 and 43 make $12,900.
The median salary — the point at which an equal amount make above and below — was $61,273 for the 333 players listed. That is up 16 percent from last year’s median of $52,965.
Guaranteed income includes salaries and a prorated share of signing bonuses plus marketing bonuses payable in 2007.
Beckham has a $5.5 million base salary.

The book: "My Bat Boy Days: Lessons I Learned from the Boys of Summer"

The author: Steve Garvey (with Ken Gurnick and Candace Garvey)

How to find it: Scribner Publishing, 149 pages, $21

Where we'd go looking for it: You'd have thought on his own website, but no. We'll go back to Powell's online bookstore link. There's also, in the Garvey library, this one simply called "Garvey" from 1986, if you're looking for some context.

The scoop: As the story goes, Garvey, growing up in Tampa, Fla., spent five years (1956-61) as a fill-in bat boy during spring training with the Brooklyn Dodgers (as well as the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees) between the ages of 7 and 12, because his dad drove a Greyhound bus that often transported teams between the airport and ballfields. Garvey's grandfather was a Brooklyn policeman who used to have Ebbets Field on his beat. So when Steve grew up to be a Dodgers All-Star first baseman, it was pretty much how the family line was meant to be.
So, what did little Steve really learn?
From Pee Wee Reese, leadership.
From Gil Hodges, dignity.
From Carl Erskine, honesty.
From Jackie Robinson, passion.
From Duke Snider, persistence.
From Roy Campanella, compassion.
From Sandy Koufax, faith.
From Mickey Mantle, fortitude.
And from Al Kaline, perfection.
Now, do you believe it?

Garvey admits his wife, Candace, helped compile the list for him to form the book. And Ken Gurnick, currently the MLB.com writer covering the Dodgers, filled in all the background on each player. It's not really clear how much time Garv actually spent with each of these guys -- it seems mostly he played catch with Hodges, but beyond that, there isn't much detail.
"How lucky was I!" he wrote. "Just a kid who got a chance to be close to greatness. To learn from the best, not just how to play the game, but how to live life with grace and character. Even with their flaws, which made me blush as a kid, it didn't change the greatness of who these men were in their souls."
So, flash forward to the Garvey of today -- a flawed man, sure. One who, despite his many accomplishments on the field that should have put him in the Hall of Fame, had some nutty things happen to him in his personal life. His perfect image was tarnished.
But should that be his legacy? Is he trying to make a connection there, between himself and those other great stars who also had their issues?

In the epilogue, the very last paragraph of the book is the most revealing:
"My personal philosophy is to live life with a winning lineup of virtues, supported by a bench full of motivation and execution skills, all for the glory of God and my family. To be perfectly honest, I have failed miserably at times during my life, but when I realized that we are on this earth to serve, I was able to get up each time and go to bat for what I believed in, wiser and stronger."
How's that for some introspection? Any reaction from Cyndi Garvey?
See how far that takes him in the public eye.

How it goes down in the scorebook: Definitely not E3. A clutch hit in a big game, more likely.

By the way: Garvey will be signing this book tonight (7 p.m.) at the Borders in Torrance (near Hawthorne and Torrance Blvds) and Saturday (1 p.m.) at the Barnes And Noble in Palm Desert.

While the Dodgers are in San Diego today, ABC is taping an episode of “The Bachelorette” Season Four at Dodger Stadium. Contestant DeAnna Pappas is supposed to narrow down her list of suitors based on their performances in a home run derby.

Tommy Lasorda is also scheduled to be there, no doubt with some financial compensation, to "provide expert analysis" -- this, according to the Dodgers' daily media notes -- as the guys take some swings at love.

Issue No. 1: Isn't the 80-year-old freak better suited to give advice to the gentlemen .... such as, don't visit a Madame who's gonna put you misspelled name in her tell-all book?

Issue No. 2: Do they have a seven-second delay on the show, even though it's not live?

The "lucky winner" of the HR Derby (are we talking Whiffle ball and giant plastic bat just trying to hit it out of the infield?) is guaranteed some one-on-one time with DeAnna in a luxury suite.

The show is expected to air on Monday, May 26.

DeAnna, unfortunately, has apparently been through this charade before.

The 25-year-old was a contestant on "The Bachelor," and was one of the two finalists before she got dumped (as evidenced by this non-exclusive photo from that show). The Georgia girl is trying to make 25 men just as miserable this time around.

Just as long as she's not pulling Tommy along for another joy ride down to I-Like-It-Rough-ville.

More on Rick Reilly and this "Leatherheads" deal:
In the current (April 7) issue of Sports Illustrated, co-script writer Duncan Brantley outlines his end of how the movie finally got made in the "Players" section (page 20).
It started as something he came across while searching the SI library in 1986, fact-checking a story about the Duluth Eskimos, a team that folded in 1927, seven years before the NFL, but possessing a player named John McNally (aka Johnny Blood) who used the alias to it wouldn't cost him his eligibilty at Saint John's University in Minnesota.

He writes: "Because of Blood's gregarious nature, a film inspired by him had to be funny. For a project born at SI, it seemed only natural to turn to Rick Reilly, one of the funniest humans on the planet." The two had worked on college football stories together -- he as a writer, Brantley as the reporter.

Gotta read the magazine for the rest of that story ...

(AP/Matt Sayles)
This is a tourist, stuck in a tour bus as it travels up Hollywood Blvd., reacting as he sees the procession of actors head into the premiere of "Leatherheads" on Monday at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Seriously.

Or, maybe the guy just spotted Rick Reilly on the red carpet.

We got more on the wonderfully charmed life of Reilly, spreading the wealth after today's media column reveals his new-found riches as co-author of the script sorta used in the George Clooney flick "Leatherheads," which comes out today.

"It was a (bleepin') thrill eating popcorn and seeing the curtain part and knowing exactly what was written but no idea what it would be like," Reilly said of seeing the premiere Monday. "The whole thing was a giant birthday cake when it's not even your birthday, and then Halle Berry pops out."

For more details about how the script went from concept to reality to being shelved, then suddenly resurfacing, Reilly spells it out on his website, including a Top 10 list of the coolest things about having Clooney make your movie. Even more on the history of the project, here on Clooney's studio site.

And all this, while Reilly has been in the middle of a six-month vacation, between leaving Sports Illustrated after 23 years and being entrusted with a boatload of cash from ESPN to do a variety of things starting in June. One of them is hosting a show called "Homecoming," which is a cross between "This Is Your Life" and "Inside the Actor's Studio," where a famous athlete goes back to his high-school gym filled of friends and family for an interview. He'll do a piece for ESPN The Magazine every two weeks, do essays for ESPN "SportsCenter." And write his 800-word pieces for ESPN.com.

To Reilly, it won't be any more difficult to transfer his SI column format to the Internet. But will that style work?

"It’s all over the map," Reilly says about sports journalism on the dot.com world. "There's some good journalism, and some really horrible crap on there from guys holding down the couch springs in their mother's basement that have never been in a lockerroom but are pining on this and that. And this gives them cache, and then they're being quoted? What? This guy is in his underwear. They could use a Greyhound bus full of editors and it still wouldn't help them. So this is the 'new style of journalism' we gotta learn?
"On the other hand, you see the solid writers they have on ESPN.com, who check their facts, go places, see people ... People who are classically trained in journalism are harder to get used to (on the Internet). It's like, for some of these, the faster you type, the better you're supposed to be? It's like the old days of sending a Western Union telegram. Once it's written and gone, do they ever look at it again? They're trying to type as fast as they can think.
"I really think a lot of this stuff (on the Internet) is read only by the people's parents. Do you read a live blog about a game? Why not turn on the game and listen to Vin Scully, the best live blogger ever? Why do we need to hear what Mortermer Franks in his basement is thinking about it?
"I was covering the Masters recently, was in the press room, in the clubhouse, on the course. And then I get back and there are three guys writing columns about the Masters, one in Houston, one in L.A. ... watching it with their buddies or their dad. Why are they writing?"

(Those comments ought to help influence anyone who participates in the regular Deadspin.com "Media Approval Ratings" of various media members ... including this recent vote on Reilly's status. As of Thursday afternoon, 57.6 percent (1,712 voters) disapproved of him, versus 42.4 (1,261) who say he's an OK dude.)

Reilly doesn't claim to always have his pulse on what people want to read, see or hear.
He said he was the first person ever asked to be a part of the ESPN show, "Around the Horn," but turned it down. "It's fun to watch, but I don't see myself getting muted by a 22-year old," he said.
A wise decision.

Reilly also said the late SI writer Ralph Wiley pitched an idea to him once.
"You and me, every day, on ESPN for a half hour," he said.
"Doing what?" Reilly asked.
"Arguing."
"Arguing about what?"
"Whatever comes up. It'll be a black guy and a white guy. We'll call it 'Wiley and Reilly.'"
"Ralph, that's the stupidest idea ever. It'll never work."
Pardon the interruption, but Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon want to know how that's working for you these days.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We haven't seen the flick, but we take this as one of the first reviews we've come across, from Adam Graham of the Detroit News:
"This is the kind of movie where characters with too-cute names like Dodge Connelly and Lexie Littleton talk about 'moxie' and say things like, 'You’re the kind of cocktail that comes on like sugar, but gives you a kick in the head,' all while subtly winking at the absurdity of such lines.
"It’s the kind of movie that pays painstaking attention to period detail, especially costume and wardrobe. Too bad the same effort wasn’t put into the script as it was into finding Clooney the perfectly weathered leather coat."
"'Leatherheads' isn’t exactly smug, but it’s too pleased with itself to bother pleasing the audience. Aside from a few faint chuckles, it’s a fumble."

From today's media column and beyond, more stuff that wasn't fit to print:

='Twas on a conference call with reporters earlier this week when CBS' Bill Packer threw out some statistics about what's going on with this NCAA Tournament thing:
-The four teams now in the Final Four won their games by a total of 288 points -- an average of about 18 points a game.
-Only four of the 16 games last weekend were decided by less than 10.
We didn't really have to check with Elias to realize there was some "old math" not working there.
First, we're not sure where he came up with 16 games last weekend. There were only 12 games (four each on Thursay and Friday, two each on Saturday and Sunday). And only two of those were decided by less than 10 points. Two others were by exactly 10 points. Maybe that's the four he's talking about.
The four teams in the Final Four have played three games total decided by less than 10: One each by Kansas and UCLA (two points each) and Memphis (three points).
Also, those four teams have won by a total of (check the calculator again) 296 points (not 288), with Carolina (101) ahead of UCLA (72), Memphis (63) and Kansas (60), upping the average to 18.6 points per victory.
A solar-powered calculator over a squirrel-powered sundial will get you a longer way in life, Billy boy...

==Another stat thrown out by CBS' Jim Nantz:
Of the 60 games so far, 34 have been decided by at least 12 points, "which is not only a record, but by a lot," Nantz said for emphasis. Last year, he notes, 29 of the first 60 were by 12 or more; in 2006, only 22. The year before that, just 20.
"But I don't think we have any more coming," Nantz figured.
Talk to us Monday night.

BOSTON (AP) — A 13-year-old girl touring Fenway Park on a school trip was attacked by a resident red-tailed hawk that drew blood from her scalp Thursday.
She wasn’t seriously hurt, but some observers saw an omen for a certain New York Yankees slugger in the attack at the home of the Boston Red Sox.
The girl’s name is Alexa Rodriguez.
Vince Jennetta, a teacher who chaperoned her class trip from Memorial Boulevard Middle School in Bristol, Conn., told The Boston Globe that Alexa is “a little shaken, but OK.”
The hawk was perched on a railing in the upper deck behind home plate while the group toured the stadium. The hawk flew at the girl and swooped with its talons extended, scratching her scalp.
A single egg lay in the hawk’s nearby nest in an overhang near the stadium’s press booth.
The nest and egg were removed at the direction of state wildlife officials.

More random numbers from San Antonio's Final Four matchups that you'll find on Bodog:

Odds to win the title:
North Carolina: 3/2
Memphis: 5/2
UCLA: 3/1
Kansas: 7/2

Odds of a final matchup:
North Carolina over Memphis: 7/2
North Carolina over UCLA: 9/2
Kansas over Memphis: 13/2
Kansas over UCLA: 8/1
Memphis over Kansas: 13/2
Memphis over North Carolina: 5/1
UCLA over Kansas: 9/1
UCLA over North Carolina: 7/1

Odds to win the Final Four MVP:
Tyler Hansbrough: 5/2
Kevin Love: 5/1
Chris Douglas-Roberts: 13/2
Brandon Rush: 8/1
Derrick Rose: 8/1
Ty Lawson: 8/1
Wayne Ellington: 8/1
Others include:
Darren Collison: 10/1
Russell Westbrook: 12/1
Josh Shipp: 15/1
Field: 11/2

Proposition bets from Memphis vs. UCLA:
What percentage will Memphis Shoot from the free-throw line against UCLA?
Over 65%
Under 65%

Kevin Love's point total vs. Memphis:
Over 19.5
Under 19.5

The book: The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, fifth edition: The most comprehensive single-volume reference in print

The author: Edited by Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer, forward by Peter Gammons

How to find it: Barnes & Noble Publishing, 1,872 pages, $24.95

Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's book store online.

The scoop: Six pounds of information -- or the size of a new-born baby.
Lists of almost everything you'd ever want about the sport, going back to Negro Leagues, college, careers interrupted by war service, all-time leaders in 150 categories, every record ever set (probably), all-time rosters ... on really thin paper in a soft-bound edition. Imagine how many trees sacrificed themselves for this.
But, as renowned statman Bill James wrotes: "Sure, you can stumble across Cliff Dapper in cyberspace, but what are the odds/ if you don't have a print encyclopedia, what are your real chances of discovering that Milo Candini could actually hit? They deserve the cold, marble permance of black ink on white pages."
So we went to page 373, and couldn't find any Candini listed as a hitter between Casey Candaele or John Cangelosi. But on BaseballReference.com, we find that Candini, a pitcher with Washington and Philadelphia between 1943 and '51, hit .243 in eight seasons with one homer. Impressed? Uh, not really.
There was one customer review of this on the Barnes & Noble site: "Lots of stats and very interesting."
Don't get too excited there.
At least, as in most ESPN-produced publications, there's not any essay by Chris Berman on why baseball players have the best nicknames.

How it goes down in the scorebook: A stand-up double.

Julie Foudy hears that Kobe Bryant will be at Thursday's Galaxy home opener at the Home Depot Center. But she could be wrong.
"I'm not much on celebrity stuff that much," the ESPN soccer analyst admitted.

On the sport of kickball -- didn't Kobe get kicked out of a recent Lakers' game for kicking the ball at the ref? -- Foudy's opinion bank is filled up and ready for a withdrawl.

Got a chance to grill her for some snappy opinons about where your David Beckham (who made it to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Tuesday) and your Los Angeles Galaxy are coming and going, based on the fact the team dropped a 4-0 decision in Colorado for its opener, and plans to show up for the home opener Thursday at Home Depot Center to play ... let's check that ... the Earthquakes of San Jose, coached by the guy who used to babysit the lads down here.

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. (AP) -- A tennis tantrum by Russian Mikhail Youzhny left him bloodied but made him a YouTube celebrity.

When Youzhny hit a backhand into the net during his third-round match Monday at the Sony Ericsson Open, he angrily whacked himself in the head three times with his racket strings. The forehand to the forehead sent a thick stream of blood running from above his hairline down his nose nearly to his mouth.

By Wednesday afternoon, video of the tantrum had drawn more than a half million hits on YouTube.

"I saw that," said James Blake, who lost in the quarterfinals Wednesday. "That was pretty funny -- not for Mikhail, I'm sure.

"Mardy Fish does that. He punches the strings and ends up bleeding on his knuckles. I did that as a kid and I kind of stopped doing that. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

The episode occurred with Youzhny trailing 5-4 in the third set of his match against Nicolas Almagro. The 11th-ranked Youzhny went on to win in a third-set tiebreaker and didn't require stitches. He lost in the next round.

Headin' to Anaheim to take the kids on "Small World?"
Just so you know: give yourself some extra time, either coming or going, this weekend.
Got this memo from the Angels reminding everyone about what's going on in their ballpark, vs. what's happening over at the Honda Center between Friday and Tuesday.
Maybe it's far enough from the Autotopia, but it's enough to wonder how that I-5's gonna look (is the construction finally finished over yonder?):

Friday: Bon Jovi at Honda Center (7:30 p.m.); Texas at Angels, Angels Stadium (7:05 p.m.)
Saturday: Bon Jovi at Honda Center (7:30 p.m.); Texas at Angels, Angels Stadium (6:05 p.m.)
Sunday: Texas at Angels, Angels Stadium (12:35 p.m.); Phoenix vs. Ducks at Honda Center (5:05 p.m.)
Monday and Tuesday: Bruce Springsteen at Honda Center (7:30 p.m.); Cleveland vs. Angels at Angels Stadium (7:05 p.m.)

The book: Baseball's Greatest Quotations: An Illustrated Treasury of Baseball Quotations and Historical Lore

The author: Paul Dickson

How to find it: HarperCollins Publishers, 652 pages, $19.95

Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's books link here, or Dickson's personal website.

The scoop: It's a revised, paperback edition of a book Dickson put out in 1991, 2 1/2 pounds of quotes about the game that we'd recommend over others out there (for example, The Gigantic Book of Baseball Quotes edited by Wayne Stewart, 787 pages, $24.95, in 2007).
We're also quite fond of Dickson's Baseball Dictonary (1989, revised in '99, and being revised again) and pretty much every other anthology he's put together on the sport (seven in all)
Why need to update it?
"I'm not here to talk about the past," said Mark McGwire at the March 17, 2005 House committee hearings on steroids.
So, it's really like a history book that continues to reflect where the game has gone and where it's heading.
The Maryland-based Dickson notes that in between editions, he realized that there aren't as many quotes about baseball, or from baseball players, as he'd expect. Much of that is because there are more Latino and Japanese players who stick to their native languages, there's most hostility between the media and the players, and older broadcasters who used to be dedicated to radio word pictures are now on TV just putting captions on whatever pictures the director wants to put up.
From Estalla Aaron (Hank's mother) to "Sad" Sam Zoldak (a former Cleveland and St. Louis relief pitcher), Dickson has recorded the best examples of what the sport means to people, and what they've said about it.

Some other quotes that caught our eye:
=="Unless you understand what sport is all about and how important winning is to you, I don't think you understand the insult part of this thing." -- Joe Torre, after rejecting the incentive-based contract offered by the New York Yankees after the 2007 season.
=="Today, I told my little girl I'm going to the ballpark, and she asked, 'What for?'" -- Dave Anderson, former Dodgers reserve infielder, in June 1987 (from Sports Illustrated).

There are 24 pages devoted to quotes from Casey Stengel, seven pages each to Babe Ruth, Dizzy Dean and Yogi Berra, four to Red Barber. Seven pages contain baseball jokes.
Vin Scully and "Shakespeare on Baseball" are separated by two pages.
Yet one quote attributed to Scully says it was from a "Boston Globe obituary for Scully, November 25, 2003."
When Scully was told of this recently, he said: "Wasn't it Mark Twain who said the reports of my demise were premature?"
There's another quote for you.

How it goes down in the scorebook: A three-run homer up into the net at Fenway Park's Green Monster.

Maybe you remember the first incarnation of the TV-made sport called SlamBall. Probably you don't.
But it's bouncing back. Bigger and bolder. And probably bloodier.
Tryouts for what its creators hope lead to a 2008 season in June include a stop on Sunday from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. at the Oakwood School in North Hollywood (11600 Magnolia Blvd.). The only other tryouts are April 8 in New York and April 10 in Bradenton, Fla.
A brief primer: Think of basketball on trampolines. A human video game. Full contact, like hockey.
They want 64 players to fill eight teams for a season to be played later this year. If you make it past the audition you'll be invited to a training game from April 11 until the draft on April 24.
Former Philadelphia 76ers owner Pat Croce is the commissioner. Mason Gordon is the creator. They don't have a TV network lined up yet to cover this -- it was on Spike TV when it first came out in 2002 and 2003, but it may launch as a Webcast only. Mason (as he explains in the video above) took the game overseas after its TV partners wanted to make it more scripted like pro wrestling. Now it's back as a "legit" sport.

==More info at www.slamball.net.
==A recent New York Times story on the sport's regurgence at this link.

(Lane Stewart /Sports Illustrated)

It's listed on the website MuseumofHoaxes.com as No. 2 on the list of the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time.

Thanks to the operational function of the new SI Vault, we're able to revisit a story by George Plimpton that came out in Sports Illustrated on this date 23 years ago.

And it wasn't even the cover story.

That was reserved for a piece on the three Big East teams that had made it to the Final Four: Georgetown (with Patrick Ewing), St. John's (with Chris Mullin) and VIllanova (with ... no one really ... Rollie Massamino?). You know the rest of that story. When Villanova knocked off Georgetown for the title on this day in 1985 as well, many thought it was an April Fool's joke.

That was reserved for this story on Sidd Finch.

"(He's) a 28-year-old, somewhat eccentric mystic named Hayden (Sidd) Finch," Plimpton wrote. "..."He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga—and his future in baseball."

And the Mets were hiding them in their spring training camp after the radar gun registered 168 on one of his pitches.

Again, thanks to this cool SI Vault, we're also able to access the July 31, 2000 issue -- one where they ask "What Ever Happened to ..." Finch surfaces again ... or at least, the follow up story.

Because of the date on the magazine's cover many readers felt they were being victimized by an April Fools' hoax. More than 2,000 of them wrote letters, some of them extremely angry at the magazine's decision to do such a thing.

The editors were startled, to put it mildly. At a hastily called meeting of the top brass, it was decided to go along with the public's assumption that the whole thing was a charade; the magazine would deny that Sidd Finch ever existed.

This was extremely upsetting to George Plimpton, the author of the article (The Curious Case of Sidd Finch), who complained bitterly that his hard work, his hound's nose for digging up the astonishing facts, his breaking through the wall of silence that the Mets had constructed around their phenomenon and his chance to win prestigious journalism awards were all now to be callously dismissed and the story written off as an elaborate practical joke. "You're knuckling under, caving in to public opinion!" Plimpton shouted at the staff meeting. "Shame! Shame! Puppets!"

In 1987, the story came out in book form, and went to paperback with in a couple of printings. So, if it's in a book, it must be true.

And the trivia part of this:

Sidd Finch was played by Joe Berton, a mild-mannered junior high school art teacher who lived in Illinois.

Baseball books by the dozens come out this time of year. And we're not complaining.
Do some kind of Google search, or even on one on Abebooks.com, and baseball would be the sport that has been written about more than any other.
It never seems to run out of material.
With the flow of baseball books sliding headfirst into our mailbox, plus the ones we've come across on the shelves of the local stores (online as well), we've tried to narrow it down to the top 30 books that have come out this spring -- that's the parameter we're working with here -- and we'll give it some kind of quick review. Only the ones we feel are worth checking out will be included.

For starters, one that was quickly our favorite of the bunch:

The book: "101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out"

The author: Josh Pahigian

How to find it: Globe Pequot Press, 240 pages, $24.95

Where we'd go looking for it: Powell's bookstore online.

The scoop: Josh knows where he's been, and where he'd like you to go. The author of "The Ultimate Minor League Baeball Road Trip" and co-author of "The Ultimate Baseball Road Trip" is a writing teacher based at the University of New England -- a bona-fide Red Sox fan -- but it's not that obvious.
"While all of this may seem a bit grandiose and ambitious, in truth this was not an exceedingly difficult book for your humble author to write," he says in the intro.
There are more than 20 museums, including the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. -- No. 1 on the list.
There are gravesites, monuments, restaurants, a movie site ("Field of Dreams" in Dyersville, Iowa) and -- the most inspired entry, Lenny Dykstra's Car Wash in Thousand Oaks -- No. 101 on the list.
How much better can everything in between get?
Knowing you'll probably never make it to half these places in your lifetime, you can now imagine what it would be like to plan a roadie that hit these stops, thanks to the calculations of someone who has gone the distance.

Those stops along the way you may be familiar with: