December 11, 2004 [LINK]
Steroid update
Was the threat by Senator John McCain the deciding factor in motivating the baseball player's association to cooperate with owners in renegotiating terms of drug testing? Perhaps. It is a sad thing whenever the iron fist of government authority is needed to straighten things out in our National Pastime. Bud Selig has made appropriate stern declarations about getting serious on this problem, but what will come of it? It's too bad that Bud's credibility suffered during the excruciatingly long process to decide on the relocation of the Montreal Expos. 
Speaking of which, the Yankees nabbed the reliable young pitcher Jaret Wright (a Brave this year), foiling the cash-poor Washington Nationals. Wait till next year! Note the counter at the top left of the Baseball page, indicating how many days remain until the Nats "Play Ball!" in good ol' RFK Stadium, on April 14. I will be there or die trying! If my plans work out, I'll also be present at the first official game the Nationals play, up at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, on April 3.
Web site transitions
The baseball home page is now integrated into this Web site's "home-made" automatic blogging system; note the ".shtml" suffix in the URL, and please adjust your bookmarks accordingly. The "[LINK]" links next to the date take you to the permanent file archive for each blog entry; in other words, they are "permalinks." Putting interactive comments links on this page and others is just around the corner... Also, I've added to the Memorial Stadium page an old photo that I found while digging through my photo albums today. A dynamic diagram will be added to that page, and many other stadiums used for football, in the near future.