I need some money - let me hit the 24-hour cashew machine

Here it is, just past the middle of February, and still in every heart there beats the promise of a new day. Pitchers and catchers reported last weekend, and then the rest of the baseball teams are rounding into shape, as they do every year about this time. Everyone here is looking forward to the Orioles opening their season against the New York Yankees, featuring their star third baseman, Alex "Human Growth Hormone" Rodriguez. But out west, they are awaiting April 9, opening day in the Class A California League for my favorite minor-league nine, the Modesto Nuts. Pictured here is the Nuts' mascot, Wing Nut, meeting his traditional rival, a B-A Elephant who seeks to crush and devour him. I tell you, they play for keeps out there in California.

Nothing to do with that, but in my first radio job, the town where I worked was just, well, nuts, about softball . They had a softball talk show, and one night a guy came running in to give me the latest scores to read. One of the teams - a women's team, no less, was nicknamed "the Ball-Busters." No one else thought it was funny but I, a scenario that has repeated over and over, over the years.

National Lampoon's radio show once ran an all-California show, and they had a skit in which Hunter S. Thompson was riding around the state, listening to the radios. One of the commercials he hears - and this was in late '74 - started off "Hi! This is Gerry Ford, sales manager for Dick Nixon Ford! Dick's gone crazy, and he's making deals like you've never seen before!" What's this, 35 years later, and still, to think of it is to laugh like a Modesto ballplayer.