By Kim J. Harmon

Last week – with all the hearts and the flowers and the candy – was the week when guys around the country got to say those three special, special words: “pitchers and catchers” . . . How can any owner give a guy like Mariano Rivera – a reliever – more than $10 million a year? Rivera pitched 75 innings last year and if he pitched another 75 innings this year that would come to $133,000 an inning (or $44,000 an out). Don’t get me wrong, I love Rivera. He is the best closer in baseball. But the New York Yankees gave Derek Jeter $18 million a year for 10 years and he plays every inning of every game (about 1,400 innings) so his per-inning take ($12,857) is much, much less than Rivera. Does that make any sense? Well, to be honest, the numbers have gotten so high that I can’t even grasp ‘em anymore ($250 million for 10 years?). None of it makes any sense . . .  So then, why is everyone making the old New York Giants out as criminals just for stealing some catcher’s signs? Isn’t that what coaches and players are supposed to do – figure out what the catcher is relaying to the pitcher? If stealing signs is so vilified, why do catcher’s have such elaborate sign languages to relay a pitch and location? Okay, okay – infielder Henry Schenz and coach Herman Franks of the Giants used technology (a buzzer) to relay signals, but could that have really helped all that much? The Giants made up a 131/2 -game deficit for crying out loud! No amount of pitch stealing could overcome that. Besides, even Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers said about Bobby Thomson’s famous Shot Heard ‘Round The World, “He still (had to) hit the pitch . . . Tom Gordon, formerly of the Boston Red Sox and now with the Chicago Cubs, used to give away his pitches by the types of gestures and glove motions he would make but a lot of hitters didn’t want to be clued in because they just wanted to react to the pitch. Right – knowing a curve ball is coming doesn’t mean you’re still going to hit it . . . I’m telling you, I wouldn’t want to be Rick Ankiel right now. No sir. The St. Louis Cardinals’ left-handed phenom is going to be under the microscope this spring, dissected and resected, as the media and his own management try to determine whether or not his meltdown in the 2000 playoffs (five wild pitches in one inning) was a temporary mechanical thing or the initial stages of the onset of Steve Blass disease. Blass was the Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher who suddenly – and inexplicably – was unable to find the strike zone. Just like that, his career was over. Mark Wohlers of the Atlanta Braves suffered it, too, and only now seems to be recovering . . . it seems a little too easy rooting for the New York Yankees. I think I’ll root for the Boston Red Sox instead this year (of course, I’m only kidding, but the Red Sox do present a challenge this year, I think, what with Manny Ramirez and all) . . . Pepsi is running this March Madness promotion for college basketball. Under the caps of their 20-ounce bottles of soda, there is a team and if that team wins either the men’s or women’s NCAA championship, then you win $10 of free Pepsi Stuff. I got three teams – Middle Tennessee State, Chicago State University and Radford University. Think I have a shot? . . . okay, now back to our roots – there was an interesting situation in a Newtown High School jayvee boys’ basketball game the other night. Reminds us of a Bill Clinton flip-flop – you know, moving a high-rise office from the west side of New York ($800,000 a year in rent) to Harlem (about $250,000 a year) just because it looks good and making it seem as if it made sense to him all along. Anyway, late in a game against Weston, Tommy Ryan made a move on the basket as the final seconds ticked away. He was fouled in the act of shooting – or so coach Jason Arnauckas thought. But the referee ruled the foul was on the floor and that Ryan needed to shoot a one-and-one. Okay, WHAT-evvverrr. The ref, though, also said the game, in lieu of the foul shots, was over – yet he allowed Weston to take a time out (which is not allowed). So coach Arnauckas thought there must be time on the clock so he wanted to send out his players to line up and possibly tap a ball back in – yet the ref insisted there was NO TIME left on the clock. So why did Weston get its timeout and chance to ice the free throw shooter? Big mess. Big, big mess . . . I’m not sure you could have asked for a better day of high school basketball than the girls’ South-West Conference quarter-finals at Masuk High School last Saturday. A day filled with basketball with at least seven of the eight teams having a legitimate shot at a championship – Pomperaug, Masuk, New Fairfield, Kolbe-Cathedral, Bunnell, Newtown and Lauralton Hall all went into the afternoon with a realistic chance at winning a title (only Bethel seemed to have the odds stacked against it). And with Masuk knocking off Pomperaug, New Fairfield rallying from a huge deficit, and Bunnell defeated Newtown with foul shots in the final four seconds, it was a day of thrilling basketball. So – where the heck was everyone? . . . I forget what it’s like to a teenager sometimes. On Monday, I tried to call Steve Selezan to talk about his CIAC Class L state championship and I made the mistake of calling at 10 am. Of course – thanks to three kids and a wife who wants to go work out – I had been up for four hours already. I should have known not to call before noon . . . even I had to admit that Foran High School was the best venue to hold the South-West Conference swimming championships because of its large amount of seating. But I hate making the trip to Milford because it is so far away from home (it takes me an hour to get home from Foran). So, the change to Pomperaug High School in Southbury for this weekend’s meet is great in that regard, but I have to admit that there is very little seating and the pool deck is so narrow and small that moving around is going to be a nightmare (and I won’t even talk about the parking situation) . . . to be honest, I never followed NASCAR and never could understand the enormous appeal that racing had (I mean, there were 200,000 people at the Daytona 500, for crying out loud!), but even I am in shock after the death of Dale Earnhardt last weekend. He was a giant of auto racing, I know, and the entire world of sports is mourning the loss of a veritable legend . . .