I left Fort Myers on Thursday morning, in a monsoon. Over at Chain of Lakes Park, water was three inches deep in the parking lot, with sheets of rain cutting visibility to a minimum. The Saint Patrick's Day Game for the Sox was called off, which just goes to show that the luck of the Irish got used up in bringing the World Championship to Boston. (Hmm, in fact, now that I think about it, I think I know why we've had so much snow and colder-than-usual temperatures in Boston all winter. It's because Hell froze over in October.) With no action in Fort Myers, I hit the road to Tampa, where the Yankees were scheduled to play the Tigers at 7pm, hoping the weather was better there.

The drive was long and soggy, and filled with sports talk radio coverage of some basketball tournament (that's the game with the orange ball, isn't it?), and the commentary about the congressional hearings on steroids.

Is there anyone in this country who believes that these steroid hearings are anything but a waste of time and money? If I didn't think so before, I sure do now. I eventually reached my parents' house, where we put on the YES Network, to see the Mike and the Mad Dog Show. For those of you who are not familiar with Mike and the Mad Dog, they are the afternoon duo on WFAN, the premiere sports talk radio station in New York. YES broadcasts the show on television, live, sort of like E! does with Howard Stern.

So you have Mike Francesa and Chris "Mad Dog" Russo listening to the hearings, and commenting on them at the same time. It was the only sane way to follow the hearings, because then at least when I was thinking "My god, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," there was Russo, assuring me I wasn't alone.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" Russo exclaimed, in response to a representative from New York grilling the players on whether they thought that a potential solution to the rampant steroid problem would be to inform major league players of the deleterious health effects by hanging up a warning sign in the clubhouse. "Yes," replied Mark McGwire. "Yes," replied Samm Sosa. "Yes," replied Rafael Palmeiro. "Yes," replied Jose Canseco. "Yes," replied Curt Schilling.

Russo voiced my thought: "If the warning labels on cigarettes don't keep people from smoking, why would that keep them off steroids?"

Among the "great" moments of the daylong hearings, we got to hear Curt Schilling call Jose Canseco a liar, and say that in 19 years in the big leagues, he has never seen a syringe. Mark McGwire took the fifth. Several congressmen embarrassed themselves by exposing their ignorance about the subject. "What, they don't have aides to prepare notes about this stuff for them?" And so you had guys who didn't know anything, asking other guys who didn't know anything. What was the point of asking the players technical questions about the union's agreement with MLB? If they really wanted to get to the ANSWERS, instead of just having a media circus, then a bunch of home run hitters should not have been up there--the union representatives should have been up there.

There was a dumb moment where the players were asked if they would be willing to go out into the high schools to speak out against steroid use. "Do you believe you're a role model?" the question game. "Mr. McGwire?" "Yes." "Mr. Sosa?" Yes." "Mr. Palmeiro?" You get the idea. What are they going to say, no? And were they willing to go out into the high schools to speak out against steroid use? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

What a crock. Each of these guys has denied using steroids, most of them now under oath, which makes one wonder what message they would bring to the high schools. "Hi kids, thanks to the steroid scandal, you all know that if you shoot roids, you can bulk up and win an MVP award like Ken Caminiti, or hit almost 500 home runs like Jose Canseco, but I'm here to tell you ... don't do it." Or just imagine if one of them does admit it. "OK, kids, I bulked up on roids and made millions of dollars in salary and endorsement contracts, but I'm here to say... don't do it." Jeez. It could be as bad as the federal campaign to stamp out glue sniffing. If you haven't heard about this, the story goes that in the 1950s, congress launched a campaign to try to solve the public health crisis of people sniffing glue to get high, which apparently can kill you or turn you into a vegetable. Well, thanks to the campaign, glue sniffing increased by leaps and bounds, as people were like "whoa! I didn't know you could get high sniffing glue!"

Then they announced that the game in Tampa was called off, too. So it was a banner day all around.

The next morning corwin and I got up to meet his parents for lunch, and then take in an exhibit at the Tampa Museum of Art. Okay, not just any art exhibit. This is "The New York Yankees and the American Dream." The exhibit was first mounted under the name "Subway Series" with Yankees-related art and memorabilia at the Bronx Museum of Art, and Mets-related art at the Queens Museum of Art. Here in Tampa, they just showed the Yankees stuff.

And it's great stuff. Art, photographs, sculpture, and the like, quite a variety. One of the terrific pieces combines the photographs of a photographer named Conlon, who started his career when he took a photo of Christy Mathewson that appeared on the cover of the Spaulding guide. The piece in the musem combines close up portraits of the starting nine of the 1927 Murderer's Row Yankees, with an autographed bat of each man's.

A chromogenic print entitled "Stadium Light" by Davd S. Allee reveals the peek into the Stadium one gets from the elevated train tracks. A mezzotint of Yankee Stadium at night, a charcoal drawing reproducing en large a photo of Roger Maris hitting a home run, the glove that Billy Martin wore when he caught that foul pop in the 1952 World Series to sink the Dodgers. Lots of great stuff. It is at the museum until April 3rd, so if you are heading for spring training in Tampa or St. Pete, it is definitely worth a visit. It takes about an hour to see the stuff, if you are like me and read all the little plaques and like to linger. The museum also has a really neat glass art exhibit, and lots of Greek sculpture and and urns.

The weather had cleared, brilliant and sunny, and the humidity had dropped. The museum closed at 5 p.m. and we realized we had made a tactical error. Our plan was to head straight to the park--and we did--but as we crossed the pedestrian bridge to Legends Field, a chilly wind began to whip. The temperature was expected to plunge into the 40s overnight, someone said. Brrr. And us, only in light jackets...

Fortunately, there are parents. My mom and dad had not yet left their home in a retirement community for fifty-five and older folks north of Tampa. They arrived just as Randy Johnson was throwing his first pitch of the night (which D'Angeleo Jimenez, former Yankee farmhand, hit for a triple). Unfortunately, I had done something boneheaded, which was leave the extra tickets for the game sitting on my desk in Boston, so they were stranded outside. Over the gate, they handed me two sweatshirts, a pair of gloves, a ski jacket, and a blanket. Then they went back to the parking lot to see if the scalpers' prices had dropped any.

Meanwhile, Johnson's night wasn't looking so good. The next two men up both hit the ball hard, and all three of the first Reds to bat not only reached base, but scored. Perhaps that put a damper on the number of people seeking tickets to see the Big Unit, or perhaps it was the cold, but before the inning was over, my parents were back, having picked up a pair of seats for thirty bucks.

The presence of the two benevolent saints who are my parents warmed our spirits. Well, okay, maybe that was the blanket, or maybe it was that Johnson suddenly turned up the heat, retiring the next eight men in a row.

If you've never seen Randy Johnson pitch, let me tell you, it's different. From where we sit behind home plate, up a bit, he arms look impossibly long, and his motion, slinging three-quarters across his body, makes it look like he hasn't even finished his follow through yet when the ball is in the catcher's glove. If it looks anything like that to the batter... well, you can see how a perfect game was within this man's abilities. With the arm angle, you really can't tell which direction the ball will break, nor whether it comes fast or slow. The Reds who had been teeing off in the first inning, suddenly looked silly. We saw one guy turn away from an inside pitch--and when he turned, the ball was already in the catcher's glove!

The Yankees, meanwhile, didn't muster much offense, though the lineup looked as it might on Opening Day:

Jeter
A-rod
Sheffield
Matsui
Posada
Giambi
Bernie
Tino
Womack

Giambi went 2-for-2, cracking a hard shot up the middle in his first at bat, and cranking a long, towering home run to right-center in his second. Oh, and did I mention these hits were both off lefty Eric Milton?

Andy Phillips also had a solo shot late in the game, but that was about the extent of the Yankees offensive excitement. Tanyon Sturtze pitched three innings, frustrating the crowd at first by issuing a walk, a strike out, a walk, and then two more strikeouts, which is not the kind of long, slow, boring inning fans want to see when it is FREEZING out. I think only the promise of the postgame fireworks show kept so many people in their seats. His next two innings were much better, and would have probably been 1-2-3 if one infield hit had not resulted from Sturtze himself trying to snag a ball as it went by the mound--only deflecting it from the infielders who were ready to make the pickup.

And then there were fireworks. Which are always nice.

After the game, corwin and I were hungry, so we drove to a nearby restaurant for a bite of sushi and some drinks, and as we were walking out, who did we see having dessert with some pals in the bar? Reggie Jackson. From the looks of things, Mr. October is not on a low carb diet, yet he's in better shape than most of the spring training coaches and aging better, too. We went over to say hello, since I interviewed him last year for 50 Greatest Yankee Games, and I wanted to ask if he had gotten the book I dropped off for him at Legends Field.

"It was in my locker this morning," he said. "Congratulations."

From there we got chatting about books and the book biz a bit (Reggie wants to do a children's book), and then he said, "So who's your friend here? You've been ignoring him."

I introduced corwin, and he and Reggie chatted about software engineering, of all things (corwin is a software engineer, and Reggie works for Microsoft doing promotional appearances, so it isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.)

But it was late and time for us to get back to my parents' house. We had a road trip planned for the morning, to Winter Haven, to see the Yankees take on the Indians.