Over at The Drumbeat, there's talk of the Japan opener, featuring this crack:

With Matsuzaka and Okajima returning home, plus Manny and Big Poppy in the lineup, the Red Sox are like the Globetrotters, which makes the A's the anonymous Washington Generals.

I think he means that the Sox turn baseball into a joke; a carnival sideshow. Yeah. (Only an ANer would spell it "Big Poppy.")

<---------Good vibes over there.

Oooh, but:
Bad vibes down below...

After an interminable three week absence, NBA basketball is back!
A's first-pitch-tosser and sometime crowd member Baron Davis and the Warriors open against the Jazz:

None of the current Warriors expects the chippiness to resurface, and Jackson, who was twice thrown out of the Dallas series, said that keeping composure was one of the biggest lessons learned from last season.

Glad to hear it!

Couple more links:
77-year-old gets carded in beer purchase:

Supermarket manager Lars Hakan Olofsson said the cashier followed the store's policy to demand ID from all customers buying alcohol because it is difficult to guess people's ages.

Where did this take place? Only in Sweden.

Judge rules against tree sitters. Personal story corner: The other day I got off the best and went up to I-house, where I like to sit, and I had some, uh, rather urgent business to attend to. So I go into the bathroom and all three stalls were filled by people who had hung up there clothes over the sides and seemed unlikely exit in the near future. So, yeah.

Finally, to steal a joke from some LL poster, did you know that the Oriole's director of baseball operations is named Andy McPhail?

Update: Giant sic for every sentence