Opening Day is two weeks away. The Grapefruit and Cactus leagues are in full swing. The non-roster invitees have had their spring moments and are now being sent to the minor league camps for reassignment. Most teams are finalizing their rosters, with a few position battles still up in the air. The starting pitchers are stretching out and getting their pitch counts up, new pitches are being perfected. Bull pens are being built, as the teams try to find that set-up guy or the leftie "situational pitcher," or a closer who can nail down those last three outs (with no thanks to Tony LaRussa who is always a candidate for Over-Manager of the Year).

As we count down until the Opening Day parade (with Johnny Bench as the Grand Marshall), March Madness is in full roar.

Thanks to Kansas losing, I’m down to two of my Final Four, although I still have five of my Elite Eight predictions still dancing, (though my South Region bracket is totally wiped out). Of course, this is all subject to how today’s games shake out so by nightfall, I may be much worse off. Thankfully my Kentucky Wildcats are so far playing about as well as they can. I am hopeful that they’ve learned (finally) how to keep the foot on the throttle and not let the other guys back into the game once the ‘Cats have ‘em down.

Watching the games the past three days has once again shown the biases and the "who knows" nature of trying to predict the tournament. You always have to pick the upsets, but deciding which upsets is the key. Plus knowing when to start picking the talent of the big guys to kick in. You Kansas fans are in mourning today but Kentucky fans know what you are feeling (since we felt pretty much the same in ’04 when we were the overall number one for the tournament and lost to UAB). The so-called "mid-majors" led this year by Butler, Northern Iowa, and St Mary’s are sending their usual "fuck you" notice to the pundits and prognosticators (although Butler as a five seed can’t really be said to be underrated this year). Just for the record I did pick Butler to go to the Final Four in their hometown of Indianapolis.

The NCAA Women’s Tournament kicked off yesterday as well. Their seeding held to form a lot better on the first day than the Men’s Tournament did. Of course, the biggest issue for the Women’s tournament is if anyone can get within 10 points of UConn, much less stop their steam rolling on to a second consecutive undefeated national championship.

So let’s talk a bit of roundball trash, whether baseball or basketball, makes me no never mind. We might even try to predict how much news will be thrown out in the trash on Good Friday. (With the Men’s and Women’s Final Fours, plus Opening Day and Easter Sunday all part of that weekend in two weeks, that will be a heavy load of trash to come.)

And because I can, here’s current Cincinnati Reds and former Boston Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo along with Red Sox GM Theo Epstein jamming at the end of this year’s Hot Stove Cool Music concert: