King Kaufman's Sports Daily
National League preview: Is anybody good enough to win this league?
Editor's note: Read the American League preview
Read more: Sports, Baseball, Barry Bonds, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
March 28, 2007 | Baseball's Opening Day, which these days is an Opening Night because of TV, is Sunday night, when the New York Mets visit the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals.
You'll be able to watch that game on ESPN if you'd like. Your ability to see hundreds of other games this year, next year and the five years after that has been the subject of much discussion this off-season, right up to a hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has led a congressional mini-snit over Major League Baseball's proposed exclusive, seven-year deal with DirecTV for the Extra Innings package of out-of-town games, which would shut out many fans who have subscribed in the past.
Hard to believe, but the games will go on whether you can see them or not.
Barry Bonds will try to hit the 22 home runs he needs to break Hank Aaron's career record, and commissioner Bud Selig will be most prominent among the many trying to ignore the steroid-tainted slugger. Sammy Sosa, tainted in his own way, will try to become the fifth man to hit 600 home runs. Sosa, 38 and inactive since 2005, when he hit .221 with Baltimore, needs 12 in a comeback year with his original team, the Texas Rangers.
Tom Glavine, Roger Clemens, Craig Biggio, Pedro Martinez, Frank Thomas, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez all have a shot at significant-round-number glory too. This list would look different if we had 11 fingers instead of 10, but there you go.
Last year was notable for a wave of impact rookies. Hanley Ramirez of the Florida Marlins and Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers won the Rookie of the Year awards in 2006, but they were the tip of the kidberg. It was the kind of year when dynamite A.L. rooks Jonathan Papelbon, Francisco Liriano, Jered Weaver and Nick Markakis combined to get two first-place votes for Rookie of the Year, when Prince Fielder could hit 28 home runs and finish seventh in the N.L. voting.
This year doesn't appear to have that kind of rookie firepower -- no year will ever appear to have it -- but as always there are some kids to watch.
Kansas City third baseman Alex Gordon is as sure a thing as a prospect can be, which is still less than a sure thing. Center fielder Chris Young and shortstop Stephen Drew -- in his first full year but not a rookie -- lead a youth brigade that has the Arizona Diamondbacks a chic pick in the National League West. Dustin Pedroia has been shown a thousand hours of David Eckstein video and handed the Boston Red Sox second-base job.
