Well we've got three major topics to address in this week's column, Hurricane Charley, Jim McGreevey's resignation as NJ governor and the Olympics. Let's take them one at a time…

Sorry Charley, only good tasting tuna get to be Starkist. The rest, obviously become Class 4 hurricanes! Did you see this thing pick up more speed than a Nolan Ryan fastball as it huffed and puffed on it's way to Florida? Or should that be "Houghed and puffed" as in Charlie Hough? Nope, scratch that, two minutes for making a knuckleball related meteorological pun… Man, quite a devastating storm as it has left thousands of Florida residents homeless and without power, food and shelter. So what is the state of Florida doing with these people? Is there enough room in the shelters for them?

If not, I might suggest that since the Tampa Bay area was hit quite hard, why not put all these people into the upper decks of Tropicana Stadium for a week or so? There's obviously no one sitting there now, is there? They could camp out, eat ballpark hot dogs and cheer on the D-Rays! Got to be better than sitting on a cot in some local high school gymnasium with a bed sheet on a string for a room divider, no? Hey while we're at it, it's probably a promotional opportunity for the Tampa Bay marketing department. D-Ray baseball in August, it's fan-tastic! Free "bobble-house" dolls (the roof moves up and down) for the first 30,000 shelter residents. Find the house with the ruby spikes under them and we'll rebuild your trailer for free…

The shocking admission this past week that NJ Governor Jim McGreevey is in fact "a gay American" (not that there's anything wrong with that!), has left many reporters stumping for details about the governor's past life. Many are finding graft and payola relating to certain favors, both political and sexual, that the governor performed before recently resigning his post. But we have a COMMISH.COM exclusive to repport! Here at The Commish's Office, a "crack" research team, (not that there's anything wrong with that either!), has uncovered that the governor was an avid fantasy baseball player, often participating in those leagues where you chose players from all eras and time periods to make up one competitive team. Well, all the details are still being checked out but what we can reveal at this time is the list of pitchers from Jim McGreevey's current team, a team known as "The Purple Teletubbies". Yeah, and we couldn't see this coming? Anyway, here's the soon-to-be-ex-governor's "staff"…

Starters: Gaylord Perry, Chief Bender, Mel Queen, Dick Pole

Relievers: Lance Carter, Rod Beck, Paul Assenmacher
Closer: Jeff Reardon

Oh and I also hear that McGreevey was an avid follower of The Full Monty Fantasy Baseball League and was rooting for the Quat Thrusts to "go all the way" in this season…

With the games of the twenty-something Olympiad in full swing it looks like Greece is the word for the next two weeks. At least if you're trying to watch anything else on NBC television. Sadly, our USA baseball team will not be representing the country as they failed to qualify for the event, losing to Mexico last year in a "winner goes to Olympics, loser gets the Expos" match during the Olympic qualifying tournament. However, host country Greece was allowed to enter a team and wouldn't you know, I do a quick perusal of the country's roster, looking for something good to go with my gyro, and I find Clay Bellinger's name on there! Yes, THE Clay Bellinger, utility man extraordinaire for the Yankees during their mid-90's heyday. I don't know if Clay's really Greek or not, but I guess he must have some ties back to the country to be allowed to play, no? Maybe his father owned a New Jersey diner? "Chee-burger, chee-burger!"… Another oddity about Olympic baseball is the rule that only one player at a time may visit the pitcher's mound. So I guess we won't see any of those "candlesticks are nice" group therapy sessions that Bull Durham made famous, eh?…

We'll end this part of our discussion with a piece of Olympic baseball trivia. Who holds the record for the most career strikeouts by a pitcher in Olympic competition? If you guessed Jose Contreras (38 pitching for Cuba in the '96 and '00 games) then you guessed correctly! I couldn't find Esteban Loaiza's career totals, can any of you Yankee fans help me with that? What's that? You can't find Loaiza either? Oh well, on to the rest of our column…

Now that we've gotten our "big three topics" for the week out of the way, we also need to address the Southern migration of this league's ownership. As most of you already know, Brian "Lost In Rotation" Legere will be lost in transition the next couple of weeks as he "packs up the truck" and relocates his family to Northern Virginia. Now don't be reading too much into this, I don't think he's planned this as a way to get there just ahead of the Expos so he's first in line for good season tickets, but you never know? He does have Jose Vidro on his team doesn't he? Brian, who's squad sits atop this week's standings holding on to a slim lead, becomes the first owner in league history to take a league-leading team South in mid-season. Assuming of course that we don't count the way Jim Kalach has taken his team "south" since assuming first place about two months ago. But seriously, when did all this migration happen?

We've now got six (6) different teams representing non-Northern states. For a league originally based in Connecticut and New Jersey, that's quite a geographic shift, almost half the league! If you're keeping score at home, we've now got Kevin Shanley (West Virginia), Walt Cherniak (Maryland), Doug Quat (Georgia), Jim Flinn and Brian Legere (Virginia) and Joe Mastrangelo (Florida) tucked away amongst the Confederacy. Did I miss anyone else? So is it safe to assume we'll be having next year's draft somewhere in the Outer Banks? Or maybe we should all meet in Durham, North Carolina, home of Nuke LaLoosh and the Bulls, for the draft? Never mind that, all you crackers just make sure you get out of your lawn chairs, hitch up the mobile homes and get your butts up above the Jim Mason-Jason Dickson line come spring time…

And finally, an update on the "double or nothing" multi-stat Red Sox/Yankees bet that Intentional Walt and Brian "Dixie" Legere had put together at this year's draft. It's best-of-7, winner gets lunch, in the following categories (with stats updated as of Monday, August 16th):

1. Combined victories for the team's top three starters:

Martinez (13), Schilling (14), Lowe (11) vs Brown (9), Vazquez (13) and Mussina (9)
Red Sox lead 38 to 31, 1 - 0 Walt thus far

2. Total runs scored: Red Sox (666) vs Yankees (650)

Walt's now up 2 - 0 after two categories

3. Number of saves: Rivera (40) vs Foulke (20)

Brian cuts Walt's lead to 2 - 1

4. Most RBI's by teammates: Ortiz (105) and Manny (87) vs A-Rod (71) and Giambi (36)

Red Sox lead 192 - 107
Brian wishes he had taken Sheff (85 RBIs) here instead, Walt leads 3 - 1
NOTE: Early in the season, Brian allowed Walt to substitute Ortiz here for Nomar after Nomar got injured. Maybe Walt should return the favor now that Giambi's all parasitic?

5. Most strikeouts, entire pitching staff: Red Sox (811) vs Yankees (740)

Walt opens up the commanding 4 - 1 lead

6. Most steals, Damon (12) vs Jeter (17)

Wait a minute, how can Johnny "Jesus" Damon steal? I thought we covered that in the 10 commandments… Walt still leads 4 categories to 2

7. Overall record, Red Sox (65 - 52 .556) vs Yankees (75 - 42 .641)

Brian keeps it close, taking the last category but Walt's currently winning 4 - 3 and should be tasting those crab cakes already. Considering Walt won last year's bet on a Kevin Millar "last at-bat of the season" homerun, better make that a double helping of the crabby cakes!

That's all I've got for this week, gotta run, men's synchronized diving is next on NBC (not that there's anything wrong with that!) 'til next week…

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