It's a funny old game, baseball. You can be a last place team and, on any given night, your bats could explode for... oh, I don't know... 30 RUNS! What? What?! My eyes: they exploded. I am without eyeballs, right now. The shock was too great. I really need to go to a hospital.

Last night, the Texas Rangers turned the opening game of their double-header against the Baltimore Orioles into a blowout by NFL standards. I thought I was reading a football score when I saw the result flash across the ticker on ESPN, last night. Twenty-nine hits? Texas is the first baseball team to score thirty runs (again, that's 3-0) in 110 years.

The linked video is actually the ESPNNews highlights of the game, but it's only appropriate. The studio anchors really put into perspective the absurdity of this blowout with observations such as, "24-3. So the Orioles are down three touchdowns here..." Hell, Texas hit two grand slams for crying out loud. Not even in the chintziest Disney sports movie will you see something like that.

Cripes! Imagine you're Baltimore, in this scenario. You're at home playing in front of possibly the most demoralized crowd in the history of organized sports. You still have another game to play immediately after this one. Trailing 30-3 in the bottom of the ninth, you look to the manager who offers an inspiring battle-cry of, "Okay, boys! We're only down 27 runs. We can pull this one out!"

The irony in all of this? Baltimore actually led 3-0. Remember, Texas is a last-place ball club. Oh baseball, you so crazy.

In his first major league at-bat more than 17 years ago, José Offerman smacked the ball out of the park. But that won't be the swing that defined his legacy as a baseball player. On Tuesday night, during a minor league game in Bridgeport, CT, the 38-year-old two-time All Star (1995, 1999) lost it after getting hit by a pitch and charged the mound. And oh yeah, he brought his bat with him? A few seconds later, Bridgeport Bluefish catcher John Nathans (who had tried to restrain Offerman) was knocked senseless with a concussion, and pitcher Matt Beech had a fractured finger, all courtesy of Offerman's accurate, compact swing.

Despite having made tens of millions during his 20-year career, Offerman had recently signed a minor-league contract with the Long Island Ducks to prove that he had enough left in the tank to make it back to "The Show." Now he's been arrested and charged with assault. Somehow, we don't think he'll be getting that call from Brian Cashman any time soon.

You don't have to be a baseball fan to know who Phil Rizzuto was -- you just have to be from New York. The diminutive shortstop-turned-broadcaster passed away this morning at the rip old age of 89, and with his passing we've lost one of baseball's, and New York's, all-time characters.

Rizzuto wasn't an especially talented player, and as a play-by-play man for the Yankees, he was anything but polished. ("He's out! No, he's safe! Holy cow!") What distinguished The Scooter was his personality, and his perseverance. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he got rejected by the Dodgers' Casey Stengel, who told him he was so small he should become a shoeshine boy. Then he made the Yankees, and proceeded to help anchor one of the the greatest dynasties in pro sports, picking up an MVP (1950) and five all-star appearances along the way. When he started out calling games, Howard Cosell told him he looked like George Burns and sounded like Grouch Marx, and that he wouldn't last long. The result: Rizzuto was a fixture in the booth for 40 years.

So here's Rizzuto's hilarious acceptance speech at Cooperstown in 1994. It took 14 years of eligibility, but he finally got in. So here's to you, Scooter. As Big George said today, "Heaven must have needed a shortstop."

(Click here for one of Rizzuto's classic Money Store commercials.)

Well, we got that over with. Last night, Barry Bonds smacked his 756th dinger over the fence, breaking Hammerin' Hank's record.

There were no boycotts (Bud Selig decided to show up, Hank Aaron sent in a respectful videotaped message), there weren't any boo-birds (he jacked it out at San Fran's AT&T park, which in recent years has functioned as a giant enabler for his gargantuan, rationalizing ego).

But still, something didn't feel right. This is the kind of record that's supposed to give even the most casual baseball fan chills. It didn't. If there wasn't the stink of steroids trailing Bonds wherever he went, whole families would have stayed up late, every night, to see if Barry was gonna do it. They didn't.

In the end most people probably reacted much like I did -- they just shrugged at one of the most hallowed records in all of sports being broken by an big-headed (steroids do that), obnoxious, stunningly-talented cheater.