And we open Week 5's News & Notes with a song honoring the season's 2nd trade, a classic one-for-one, power-for-speed swap between Jim "The Piano Man" Kalach and Intentional Walt Cherniak. Jim Edmonds becomes a member of the power-craving Walts and Juan "Lucky" Pierre takes his wheels over to Babe's Piano Movers, the team that never met a Colorado Rockie batter they didn't like….

For those of you keeping score at home, that's now two (2) trades for Walt and zero (0) for Trader Neil. Not to put any pressure on Neil or anything, but if I don't see some serious swapping action from the Chuggers, I'm going to have to hang the "Trader Formerly Known As" tag on Mr. Eskow… And don't worry Kevin Kelly, I haven't forgotten about you either. The Trendy Trade Master of the past two seasons has also yet to talk deal thus far, but I know it's just a matter of time before the Manalapan Mauler (did you all know Kevin moved to New Jersey so he's no longer The Staten Island Sniper?), presses the panic button and deals his entire pitching staff for Omar Daal and the entire Yankees bullpen…

Staying in the league (yeah, slow news week in the majors), The Lord Of The Swings is back on top after a colossal +14 ½ point offensive surge led by Mark Whiten's, er excuse me, Mike Cameron's 4 homer night (not to be confused with a 3 dog night or the 2 man bobsled). You know if the Swing Lord keeps having weeks like the past one, this could get Hobbit forming, er make that habit forming… And how about the "Forever Young" transaction this past week by The Commish? He brought back Dmitri (Young) and cut Michael (Young). Not too shabby, eh?

As for Cameron's outstanding performance, four homers in one game makes him the 13th member of the 4-HR club. As the newest member of the 4-H club, Mike also was rewarded a white ribbon, a pair of sheep, three goats and a horse for his efforts… Speaking of horses, how about we beat this next dead one for a sentence or two? Darryl Strawberry has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for his recent parole violations. In yet another plea bargain attempt by Darryl's lawyer, a judge rejected Straw's offer to spend the whole next television season living with Ozzy Osbourne's family in return for time served…

So much for my catchers as managers conspiracy theories as Milwaukee has named Jerry Royster (yep, another 2nd baseman) to be their skipper for the remainder of the season. Although, as they say hope does spring eternal as Kansas City has fired manager Tony Muser and replaced him with John Mizerock, a third string catcher for the Astros in the mid-80's. Hmmm? Somebody call Oliver Stone, I think I'm on to something here. Does anyone know what John Stearns or Ozzie Virgil are doing right now? I said Ozzie Virgil, not Ozzy Osbourne, don't get all excited, just switch over to MTV, I'm sure the show's on right now. Either that or The Real World, it's about all they show on that channel these days. Man, I never thought I'd say it but I actually miss Carson Daly! Anyway, enough about MTV, let's get back to baseball…

The Mets gave away Mike Piazza bobble heads last Sunday and wouldn't you know it, that was one of the few Sundays for which I don't have Mets tickets! Which is probably all for the better anyway because they were only giving away the dolls to kids 14 and under so I would've had to take the 7 train out to Shea, stopped of at a random stop in Queens, grabbed a kid off the street and then bought him a hot dog, a Coke and a Rey Ordonez t-shirt in exchange for his bobble head anyway. Besides, since Piazza's on Doug's roster, I probably would've been moved to present the doll to The Quat Thrusts as a token of friendship (although he might have offered me a middle infielder's bobble head in a trade) and with the luck Doug's having with Mike these days he probably would've dropped Piazza's ceramic likeness and just gotten himself seven weeks bad luck…

Turning to domestic issues, a scary situation is developing in Middle America as seemingly randomly placed pipe bombs are turning up in people's mailboxes all over the rural Midwest and nobody seems to know why. What I think is that there's a correlation of some kind between the number of psychotic fantasy baseball owners who know how to make such bombs and the number of AL and NL Central division starters living in their team's state with ERA's over 5.00 and Ratio's over one and a half! But that's just one man's humble and unsolicited opinion, I'll leave the rest of the analysis to the government experts…

And on that note, I'm out of here for this week. It's the day after Cinco De Mayo and I partied a little too hard last night. I tell you, I didn't know that much mayonnaise could upset one's stomach so badly! Perhaps I should've asked them to hold the Cinco De Mayo? "And as the rest of the league groaned in pain over the bad pun, The Commish faded out to Billy Joel music. Make us a trade you're the Piano Man…" 'til next week…