Now leading off, a new baseball season

The world -- as usual -- is full of problems. We have radiation drifting over from Japan, persistently high unemployment, and American forces fighting in three different countries. In a different category of affliction altogether, there is the LIE.

But let's worry about all that tomorrow, shall we? Today, at long last, we have baseball.

Opening Day is here, and for those indifferent to crocuses, robins and other such natural harbingers, there isn't a more welcome sign of renewal -- or a better refuge from the travails of daily life.

"The game begins in the spring," wrote the scholar (and later baseball commissioner) A. Bartlett Giamatti, "when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive."

Can the Mets hoist themselves into the playoffs? Can the Yankees possibly be kept out? Aside from "Will you marry me?" and "Do you want the lump sum?," can there be any questions more hopeful than these?

Giamatti, who only lived to be 51, observed in his 40th year that, "there comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it."

He was right, sadly, but we'll worry about that tomorrow too. As for today, play ball!