George Will says that there are only two seasons in the year for a true baseball fan:

Baseball Season and The Void.

The Void may be approaching sooner than planned, if these buttheads in the labor negotiations don't get their act together. I understand that they're not too far apart at this point, but we'll see. Murray Chass of the NY Times ("All the News that Fits, We Print") had an article essentially kissing Bud Selig's ass, in which El Bud is quoted as saying, regarding the current labor problems, "I blame myself".

Finally, we agree on something.

Incidentally, I didn't bother to write this before because, well, no one was reading this before a few days ago, but now at least a few people are. If you have access to last weeks issue of Sports Illustrated, the one with Alfonso Soriano on the cover, the letter to the editor in the center column of page 16, under the headline Thorny Problem, is from me! It's just a one sentence response to a fluffy Pete Rose piece that Frank DeFord wrote, but it's an official publication. On paper. Pretty cool, eh?