Let the games begin.

Somewhere in the middle of the country, the defending World Champions of baseball (regular season record: 83-78) are doing battle with the enemies of our enemies (and therefore our friends), who live in a big ugly blue donut down the street from me.

No, I'm not on drugs - but I do have a bad case of Baseball Fever!

(April Fools! I bet after reading that intro, you thought you wandered across the sports page for the New York Daily Post News, didn't you?)

The Cardinals and Mets play tonight, and then real major league baseball begins tomorrow with 1 o'clock games in New York and Detroit, and then our beloved Boston Red Sox take on the Small Market Regal Martyrs at 4pm. And quite frankly, I'm giddy.

Once again, I will log on to my mlb.com account (motto: "Grainy Pixelated Baseball Is Better Than Relying On espn.com's Gameday, and Only $100 More"), connect my computer to my TV, and try to make out what the hell is going on. I'm banking on the Sox coming out hot to start off this season, as our pinstriped friends are experiencing a bit of trouble in their starting rotation, but its only a matter of time until they fleece somebody and end up with a fresh mercenary arm.

If you haven't heard, Carl Pavano is the Yankees opening day starter. To put that in context, Carl Pavano would probably just barely be the fourth starter on the Sox. And that makes me feel good. To go a step further, let's check out the current state of the Yankees rotation according to their website: Wang, Pavano, Mussina, Pettite, and Igawa. Wang just went on the 15-day DL to start the season, and Pettite is day-to-day with a horse face, although it won't cause him to miss any starts. Two weeks ago our rotation would have blown the doors off of a Pavano-Mussina-Sissy Pettite-Igawa-Darrell Rasner ("who is darrell rasner?") offering, but since we made sure to appease the short-sighted "this is the year!" crowd and offered a spot in the rotation to friggin' Runelvys Hernandez or whoever at the expense of the health of a flamethrower, I suppose we don't have that advantage.

(Now I'm not saying Jonathan Papelbon is the next Roger Clemens. But let's say for a second that Jonathan Papelbon is the next Roger Clemens. Imagine if John McNamara had looked out at his bullpen in 1985 and decided the young Rocket would be much more effective than Steve Crawford or Bob Stanley as the closer, and that the starting rotation of Boyd-Hurst-Nipper-Ojeda-Lollar was good enough. Roger Clemens would have been Lee Smith. But no, its great to have Paps in the pen. I can't wait to see Kason Gabbard on my pixelated computer screen on Saturday.)

And here's a little scenario I could see playing out over the next several months: Kei Igawa will go nuts against teams that have never seen him before and put up similar numbers to Matsuzaka, and the Daily Post News will run wildly offensive headlines suggesting the Yankees got the much better Japanese import. This is exactly the kind of situation that makes me hate living in New York, because Yankee fans (a) won't listen to the suggestion that they wait and see how they compare over the course of the year, and (b) at the end of the year when Matsuzaka is head and shoulders better, they'll deny the conversation ever happened.

And one more New York note before I sign off for the evening - there can't be a player more overrated by their fanbase right now than Jose Reyes. I can't believe how Yankee fans are talking about him. There was literally a picture of him on the paper of one of the free newspapers this week with a headline suggesting Willie Mays better look out because Reyes was going to replace him in our collective memories.

Are you kidding me? Willie Mays? Reyes' most similar players through age 23, according to baseballreference.com, include Jim Fregosi, Wil "It's For You" Cordero, and the illustrious Edgar Renteria. Suffice it to say, the Say Hey Kid did not appear anywhere on this list.

(Side note: Jose Reyes is one day younger than me. Guess its too late for me to break into the big leagues.)

Now I know Reyes is a flashy defensive player who busts his butt and is entertaining to watch, but this guy is rapidly becoming a first-round draft pick in fantasy leagues. And that's crazy.

What's even more crazy is the Mets have a much more exciting player, in my opinion, to Reyes' immediate right in David Wright. PETCOTA projects Wright to put up a .386 OBP this season, hitting 32 homers and batting .302 with 20 stolen bases while manning the hot corner. Reyes, on the other hand, is looking at a .335 OBP with 14 homers and a .290 batting average while swiping an amazing 63 bases.

I'm not going to go too in-depth with this, but Scoop Jackson at espn.com has written dozens of columns about similar disparities in public attention between teammates - situations where one player is clearly significantly better than the other, yet the weaker player is a media darling and the subject of public adoration.

I'm guessing Scoop will let this one slide under the radar.

I wonder why?