'It's a nice day, let's play two'

Here we go. Opening Day. Yeah, pretty sudden it seems, but the Major League season is upon us. We're not too sure what to expect, but let's just say we won't be too surprised to see a team from New York and St. Louis playing deep into October.

Much of the recent baseball talks have involved Barry Bonds, steroids and some pastries filled with this special cream and clear. The whole steroid crap is getting old in our mind and seems as played out as that Ron Artest rap CD.

As far as teams to beat, well, we already told you that we think the Cardinals and Yankees will be having a pants party come October. But, if you can recall (and we know we hardly can) that the Chicago White Stockings won this little contest known as the World Series last year. Now they've added pitcher Javier Vazquez and slugger Jim Thome. So, all in all, the ChiSox have improved, while the Yankees didn't do much. They were able to pick up flashy leadoff man, Benedict Arnold, but they didn't do much for their mediocre pitching staff. That pitching will likely fold if they run into a daunting offense like that of St. Louis.

The Oakland A's are the trendy pick to go deep this season. Many of our closest friends are A's' fans, so we guess there could be worse teams to root for. Rich Harden is young, good and Canadian. The first two are good for Oakland...though being Canadian is really just kind of one of those unfortunate things a person has to deal with in life.

As for the National League, ugh, the Cardinals will be good and the New York Mets spent $578 billion to probably come in second or third place. That team from Atlanta -- you know, the one with that fucking tomahawk chop -- doesn't really know what second place means. So, by default, they'll likely win the NL East again and got ousted in the first round of the playoffs.

(Quick side note: the American League, has seven strong teams (Oakland, Anaheim, Chicago, Cleveland, Minnesota, New York and Boston) competing for four playoff spots. A few good teams won't be playing in the postseason this year. Profound statement, huh?)

We won't give our predictions for the winner of each division because we're wusses like that, but the folks at ESPN.com have larger balls than we do. Find out what these so-called experts think, as they give their predictions for the year.

But hey, it's baseball season which means summer is just around the corner. We're excited. If we could take off work to go catch the Giants' opener we would. But first off, they're in San Diego tomorrow, and second, we may take off work anyway, but it may be hard to get from Seattle to The Bay. We'll be cheering from home.

In other news: Maryland, led by Steve Francis' 28 points, beat North Carolina 81-70 in the Women's Final Four Sunday.