Man, Monday mornings round this time of year seem to be the worst for baseball news. The papers are replete with football scores and basketball and hockey news. For a true baseball nyerd, you just pray there are some scraps for us. On my crowded subway ride into Manhattan this morning I saw an older Spanish man standing a few feet away, a rolled up newspaper in his back pocket. There was a photograph of a baseball player swinging a bat on back page of the paper. I couldn’t tell who the player was (I could only see from the waist down), or what team he played for. But what did that matter? It was nice to see something, anything related to baseball. And it was a comfort to know that for some papers (i.e., the Latin ones), baseball is year-round back page news.

Today gives bubkus in New York, the bubkus being Nomar and the Dodgers, Paul Lo Duca and the Mets, and the Yankees’ interest in taking a chance on injured relief pitcher Octavio Dotel.