Baseball Players

"Are you saying you're sorry?" I'm standing in a spacious Texas Rangers clubhouse, on a gorgeous spring morning, speaking to a trim and talkative Andruw Jones. His legs are back. His smile is back. Even his -- gasp -- swing might be back. Later this day at Surprise Stadium, he will stroke through a fastball from new Dodger Claudio Vargas, driving it off the left-field bullpen roof for his first home run of the spring. A nasty bite of the hand that still feeds him $22 million.

One day recently, the Dodgers' James Loney saw his name circled on the list of players slated to travel the next day for a Cactus League game. Loney dutifully showed up extra early the next morning and boarded the team bus. But the first baseman wasn't really scheduled for the trip -- an unknown teammate had circled his name as a prank. When Loney got off the bus, "that was the maddest I've ever seen him," coach Larry Bowa said. "You're not supposed to do that in the clubhouse."

Quick (answer in next paragraph) quiz: Name the only American League team whose projected starting outfielders each hit at least 20 home runs last season. Answer: The Angels, a team perennially in search of a big bat. "I've looked at that," center fielder Torii Hunter said. "If we stay healthy, I definitely think it can be one of the best-hitting outfields in the game."

Bud Selig has gone into hiding. These should be days of triumph for the beleaguered commissioner. He ought to wave a Mannywood T-shirt before the nags in Congress: Look, boys, we caught a big fish! Instead, these are days of silence. In the six days since Manny Ramirez was suspended for violating baseball's drug policy, we have heard not a word from Selig. There is no joy, not to the players and teams with which Ramirez performed, their accomplishments suddenly subject to suspicion.

No trace of the medicine HCG was found in Manny Ramirez's system at the time of his drug test, three sources with specific knowledge of the results have told The Times. It was a prescription for that drug, which is a non-steroid but banned by Major League Baseball, that led to the outfielder's 50-game suspension for violating the league's drug policy.

Catcher Dustin Garneau made his mark this season by helping an inexperienced Cal State Fullerton pitching staff become one of the best in college baseball. So Garneau's .269 batting average, lowest among Titans starters during the regular season, was not a concern. "They take my offense pretty much as a bonus," the senior from San Pedro said. Fullerton got everything and more from Garneau during a sweep of an NCAA Division I regional at Fullerton last week.

Heath Bell reported to the San Diego Padres' camp this spring weighing 25 pounds less than he did at the end of last season. His secret? He played video games. Baseball's current saves leader had put together an off-season training program that included many hours playing Nintendo's Wii Fit game, which runs a series of interactive exercise programs.

The adjective du jour is "extraordinary." Scott Boras uses a thesaurus better than anyone in baseball. He has advertised players as special, as premium, as iconic. For Stephen Strasburg, and for Boras' mission to get him paid as if he were a free agent rather than a draft pick, baseball's most powerful agent has chosen "extraordinary." As in: "The equation of how an extraordinary talent fits in really has little or nothing to do with the other aspects of the draft."

Who among us was taken aback by the news that Sammy Sosa used performance-enhancing drugs to fuel his bulked-up career? We'd already witnessed Sosa's flim-flam act before a congressional committee investigating steroids, his sudden inability to speak English after hard questions came.