Well at least poor old Armando has some company in this young season as we find that many other "star" pitchers are also suffering. Suffering in fact from a bad case of SARS, which in this case has nothing to do with a respiratory ailment (unless of course you own Randy Johnson!), but instead stands for Some Aces Really Suck… And then there are some pitchers who we never expected to be this good. Take new Royals ace Runelvys Hernandez for instance. This guy's so hot right now I hear they're thinking about making another one of those "Elvis" movies for him. I hear the working title is Royal Blue Hawaii… Which of course is better than Jailhouse Rock, "White Sox fan rednecks in the county jail, On Gamboa and Laz Diaz they did wail…" Can you believe the fan violence continued unabated this week as an Oakland A's fan beaned Texas Rangers centerfielder Carl Everett in the head with a cell phone? "Hey Carl, you suck! I said Hey Carl you suck! {fan throws phone} Hey Carl! Can you hear me now? Good!…

Tonight only on Showtime Boxing Pay Per View, Tino Martinez/Miguel Batista, 15 Rounds On The Pitchers Mound, order now… Quick Rey Ordonez update; .299, 3 HR's, 15 RBI's, please Mommy make it stop!… So I see that Monday is Patriots Day in Boston? So is this the day everyone in Massachusetts gets a day off to honor Tom Brady? All I do know about Patriots Day is that it's the day they run the Boston Marathon and it's also the day the Red Sox game starts at like 11AM. First the Marathon, let me guess, a Kenyan won? What a surprise… And then the Sox game. Well, starting pitcher John "Charcoal" Burkett got B-B-Q'ed for 7 runs in 2 and two thirds. Guess Mr. Burkett's not going to have to worry about boycotting this season's All Star Game is he? Maybe he can sit home and watch it on TV with Tim Robbins… Oh, did I mention that some guy from Kenya pinch ran in the 6th and stole three bases while the Blue Jays won big? And have you seen that they've now got seats on top of the Green Monster? That's kind of cool, don't you think? I wonder if they had seats up there back in 1978, whether or not someone would've thrown back Bucky Dent's home-run?

Moving on to league news, I'm happy to announce that we had our first trade of the season! No it wasn't Trader Neil or Intentional Walt or even the Caruso Brothers, who we all know make such enticing first offers. No instead it was Brian "I Hate My Pitching" Legere unloading some of that same pitching to Charlie and Joe as Randy Winn and Vladimir Nunez go from the Breaking Balls to You're Killing Me Smalls in exchange for so to be catcher Craig Wilson and Randy "The Little Unit" Wolf. It's not a block buster but it's certainly a good icebreaker for the rest of us. Actually, from what I hear and get cc'ed on, it looks like there's a whole lot of trading talk going on! I actually heard that someone out there who shall remain nameless (but drafted both Derek Jeter and Rob Nen) thinks the Jay Payton is a "mini Sammy Sosa"! Yeah, and I bet he even has the little mini shattered batting helmet courtesy of getting hit in his mini head by tiny Salomon Torres, too…

A correction to make from last week in which I referred to He-Man Yankee Haters Club owner Don Cardoza as Donnie Baseball. After writing that column it was immediately pointed out to me by many of you Yankee fans that Mr. Mattingly is a much better clutch hitter than Mr. Cardoza. To which I responded, sounds like sour grapes for the Yankee Haters Club and I bet Cardoza's back will hold up better as he ages… Anyway, to avoid confusion from here on in the co-owner of the He-Man Yankee Haters Club will only be referred to as Donnie Rotisserie Baseball… A whole lot of movement in the standings this week as well as no less than five (5) teams move 20 points or more in the rankings! The big mover was The Quat Thrusts! who go plus-31 ½ and move from last place to 9th. The big drop was from the formerly first-place Intentional Walts who give up their entire 30 point lead and then some, plummeting down to 3rd place after taking a minus-33 ½… Other movers and shakers included The Piano Man (up 22 ½ from 14th to 4th), defending champ Ray Boyce (minus 20 ½ from 5th to 15th), AOL Time Warner (down 2.38% to 12.9) and of course, our new leader, Matt & The (friggin') Hat, whose power-induced, 6 HR night (7 if you count Kerry Wood's blast), has vaulted Shanley and Matt 21 ½ points in the standings and into first place where the view's breathtaking, even if you do have to look around that fat guy in 6th place stretching out the Mo Vaughn jersey…

So before I go, some things to consider for next week's column. First off, I still want to know the origin of the exclamation point ("!") in Doug's team name. If I don't get an answer from The Quat Thrust himself, I'm going to publish something about him being related to the Montreal Expos mascot, whose exclamation-point suffixed name is Youppi!… Next we want also want to hear from Brian Legere on why he no longer likes Randy Wolf, the pitcher he acquired in this week's deal… We also want to know why Dennis Milewski has yet to add Randy Choate to the rest of the Yankees he currently has on the pitching staff of 1-800-RATS, and finally, we'll have a round table discussion of who is the sexier Caruso and Flinn brother, Guy or Joe and Mike or Jim. Or perhaps we'll just conveniently run out of time before we get to that!

And speaking about running out of time, I'll leave you know with a Top Ten of "Brianisms", nicknames in the tradition of Chris Berman, sent to me by my brother along with this week's transactions…

Thanks bro, I needed a little more material to make this a two-page column! Well that's all for this week. Gotta go get out my slide rule and abacus to figure out Oliver Perez' ratio. Gee, I hope this thing can handle three significant digits before the decimal point… 'til next week…