Holy Cow!

It's just difficult. March Madness is just around the corner, and our Melrose Lady Raiders get knocked out at the Garden. Oh, the indignity of it.

Well, anyway. It's 'Toe-Main' poisoning for the Dominican Dandy Pedro Martinez, whose value, Rotisserie and otherwise, plummets, as his right big toe aches. Maybe he'll give back some of the 53 million to the Mets. Right. My, oh my, Minaya, will the Gotham fans be on your backside if Pay-dro can't go.

As for the WBC, and the US, if Venus is in the House of Mars or something, and Japan covers the spread in Hanshin, then the US goes home, or stays home. Mom, apple pie, and baseball. So maybe it's only Mom and apple pie. How do you like them 'apples?

The Sox haven't yet arrived in Fort Myers, and The Replacements continue to get knocked around until the regulars return from wherever the aliens kidnapped them. Bronson Arroyo is making a campaign for the batting practice pitcher, with an ERA that looks like a Wonderlic score.

Next year, they'll be facing Salem State and UMASS in the spring to try to help buff up the record. No problemo, the games mean nothing, unless of course you get off to a terrible start in April, in which case it's about 'carryover'.

Meanwhile, Terry Francona gets a new deal. Good for him. He'll always be remembered as the 'cursebreaker', so more power to him. Speaking of The Curse, I own several of 'Shank' Shaughnessy's books, because he's not a bad writer. Got 'em at a used bookstore...Seeing Red is really the best in my opinion.

So the Sox trade Mirabelli, and now they're looking to reacquire him. There must be some analogy in the sportsworld somewhere, the boomerang, or the undoing of the Kekich and Peterson families, or something.

Meanwhile, the biggest controversy is the legitimacy of Barry Bonds' records. Hey the guy could hit before 1999, he just hit 'em farther after that. So, we'll take the Palmeiro factor and multiply his career homers by 'X' a constant, and apply that to all sluggers post 1990. So if Raffy hit 550, we multiply by about .73 to give him about 400. And they say Jim Rice wasn't good enough to get into the Hall of Fame. And about that Viagra thing, don't steroid hurt the long ball?