-- Baseball is back and is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring and blossoms in summer, then as soon as the chill and rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone ... Full squads have now reported, steroid dealers report next week ... A-Roid claims his predictament was an accident. He thought he was climbing into the training room Jacuzzi, but it turned out to be the team's syringe-disposal bin ... Top sign your teammate is taking steroids: the third baseman asks you to spot him while he bench presses his car out of a ditch ... There are still 103 unnamed players who tested positive for 'roids is 2003. There haven't been this many nervous men since Heidi Fleiss threatened to release her client list ... Why is it the guy with the biggest stomach will be the first to take his shirt off at a game? ... Based on a 40-hour work week, if Manny Ramirez receives that $25 million contract, he will earn $12,019 per hour. The average American would have to work 595 years to earn Manny's 2009 salary.
-- Barbara Miller asks what dog breed is named for a tax collector? The answer: Doberman pinscher.
-- Jets quarterback Brett Favre update: Another aging jet has been grounded. So long, grandpa ... Did you know, as a prep quarterback in PIttsburgh, Steeler chairman Dan Rooney, 76, was named to the All-Catholic School 2nd team? The first team quarterback was Johnny Unitas.
-- Sorry to hear Rice's hoops mascot, "Sammy the Owl", was ejected last week for bumping the referee.
-- Former Beatle Paul McCartney has signed to open a new showroom--"The Joint"--at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The only opening night guest on the list so far is Michael Phelps ... The $450 million Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing now sits empty and will require $8.8 million in annual upkeep--the same amount Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pays his plastc surgeon.
-- Golfer Bob Bruce: "What's nice about our Senior Tour is you can't remember your bad shots."
-- Russian soccer star Andrey Arshavin states if he had the power to ban women from driving cars, he'd do it without thinking twice. Sounds like he's a perfect candidate for enrollment in the Lorena Bobbett finishing school.
-- In closing, this from Maria Cunningham: "Where did the ill-fated general George Armstrong Custer rank in his class at West Point? Answer - last. Shocked?
(Some of the information in this column was obtained from other news organizations)
