Two Strikes Down, and the Season Just Started

Count columnist Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press among those already sick of baseball.

“Has there ever been a year in which the game has brought more of a shudder?” he wrote before Sunday’s opener. “Before a real pitch has been thrown, baseball is neck-high in investigations, lawsuits, grand juries, books, drug rumors, steroids and asterisks.

“Can’t we just postpone the whole thing -- until it looks more like a sport and less like a congressional subcommittee?”

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Twin bill: Particularly disheartened by the steroid controversy, Albom continues, “Alas, the sport we once looked forward to has been cleft in two: There’s the game you want to believe in and the game you actually see.”

Clearly not the kind of doubleheader baseball wants to present.

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Trivia time: What is the origin of the phrase “can of corn,” used to describe an easy fly ball?

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Three cheers: Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post wrote that he was weary of the hype surrounding his home team, the Colorado Rockies, but his spirits were nonetheless lifted by what he considered the day’s big story:

“Aramark’s spokesperson Kathleen Keenan tells me beer prices at Coors Canaveral will remain the same as last season. Woo-hoo!”

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Bound to happen: Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News predicts that Aug. 20 is the day Barry Bonds will catch home run leader Hank Aaron, “while a weeping nation looks at its feet, plugs its ears and hums the chorus of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame.’ ”

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Won’t be missed: Responding to news that Major League Baseball sponsors Bank of America and Home Depot will not participate in celebrations if and when Bonds achieves the milestone, Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle comments:

“That certainly is a blow. A baseball celebration without a corporate-logo full-page ad in USA Today is like Fourth of July without sauerkraut sno-cones.”

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Scary place: Former Dodger Milton Bradley, now with the Oakland Athletics, was quoted in the Contra Costa Times as saying, “I watch myself walk around the clubhouse, and I watch every reporter turn their head everywhere I go.”

To which Ostler confessed, “Man, it’s creepy watching him watch us watching him.”

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Late hit: Responding to the announcement that the Detroit Lions had released quarterback Joey Harrington, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald noted, “At the news conference, he was picked off twice.”

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Trivia answer: According to “The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary,” the phrase originated back in the days when grocers would tilt tall store shelves and catch canned goods in their aprons.

The phrase was first published in 1896 in Burt L. Standish’s “Frank Merriwell’s Schooldays.”

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And finally: Dave Thomas in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “The Clippers have their first winning season since 1991-92. Send all regrets to ‘The Tonight Show’ joke writers.”