Not even five minutes in, the tears started. Mariano Rivera sat in the middle of a room full of strangers, ready to tell his story, and ended up listening to everyone else's. The family that lost a son in unimaginable fashion. The boy beaten down by cancer and chemo who peeled himself off the bench to pitch one more inning. Rivera nodded and smiled and consoled and comforted and, more than anything, he thanked them for thinking they were the ones getting something out of this day when he gleaned even more.

Sometimes we delude ourselves into thinking the social media revolution has returned the public's access to an increasingly insular sporting world. This, with rare exception, is not true. Digital communication is so fleeting, so intangible, a joke of a stand-in for the richness of an experience like the one Rivera is providing across the sport in his final season. When he and New York Yankees PR director Jason Zillo brainstormed the idea to spend time with local fans and workers in

Instant replay is not a cure-all to the incompetence of umpires who forget rules, the uselessness of those who butcher calls and the hubris of those who delight in confronting and ejecting players and managers because they can. It is a salve, something on which Major League Baseball can use as proof that slowly it's targeting officiating issues and irradiating them.

[Y! Sports Radio: Jeff Passan talks instant replay expansion and other hot topics]

For now, it is on the owners to do their part. During what is expected to be a fairly uneventful set of owners' meetings in New York on Wednesday and Thursday, replay will meet another important juncture, according to sources: Receiving support, approval and, most vital, funding from ownership.

Count A's manager Bob Melvin as someone who wants more accountability from Angel Hernandez and the umps. (AP) This is not the fait accompli it should be. Replay is terribly divisive because it offers so many possibilities. Some owners want a full-blown, replay-everything system. Others prefer it with challenge flags or believe it should stay how it is. And there

CC Sabathia's velocity is down but he says he's relying on location to stay effective. (USA Today Sports)

The pitching victory has taken a beating in recent years, and rightfully so. It often makes bad pitchers look good, weakly correlates with actual performance and somehow still remains relevant. The win is like a Buckingham Palace guard: bathed in glory for showing nothing.

A single victory for a pitcher means nothing in the larger context. Same for a year's worth. Or, for that matter, five years'. When they start to add up, something funny happens: They start to become significant. And indicative. And a damn good arbiter for excellence. Because more and more, in an era after steroids and amphetamines were the peanut butter and jelly of clubhouses everywhere, excellence has been redefined not just as superior performance but performance plus longevity.

Randy Johnson was the last pitcher to win 300 career games, doing it as a Giant in 2009. (Y! Sports)

Especially among starting pitchers. One whose arm lasts 20 years without significant injury, or even after a major surgery, is a miracle. It's why even as the single-season home run record was obliterated into a punch line and the

What started off as a wonderful tradition and homage to breast cancer survivors everywhere, the use of pink bats on Mother's Day, has turned into another ugly example of corporate greed. Hopefully sometime between now and Sunday, Major League Baseball and Louisville Slugger will realize there are few greater sins than monetizing disease, and fix that.

Baltimore outfielder Nick Markakis and Minnesota third baseman Trevor Plouffe, both of whose mothers are breast cancer survivors, received special bats from manufacturer MaxBat this week. They have been told not to use the bats, with their pink MaxBat labels, because they don't comply with a league policy – one Louisville Slugger purchased through a charitable donation.

Bats with this pink MaxBat label don't comply with league policy. (@maxbatbaseball)In early April, MLB official Roy Krasik sent an email to all league-approved bat manufacturers outlining the rules on pink bats. The email, obtained by Yahoo! Sports, specifically mandates the only company allowed to manufacture a pink bat with its name on the label is

The secret trick that led to accusations of Boston Red Sox starter Clay Buchholz throwing a spitball has an ancillary benefit: It prevents skin cancer, too.

Two veteran pitchers and one source close to the Red Sox told Yahoo! Sports that about 90 percent of major league pitchers use some form of spray-on sunscreen – almost always BullFrog brand – that when combined with powdered rosin gives them a far superior grip on the ball.

Boston pitcher Clay Buchholz's move to his left forearm is sometimes part of his pre-pitch ritual."Sunscreen and rosin could be used as foundation for houses," one American League pitcher said. "Produces a tack, glue-like substance that engineers would be jealous of."

During Buchholz's May 1 start against Toronto, Blue Jays color commentator Dirk Hayhurst said on Twitter the right-hander was "loading the ball" with "slick'em painted up his left forearm." When shown video of Buchholz, Jack Morris, also a commentator for Sportsnet, said, "He's throwing a spitter."

The umpires did not check. Blue Jays players said nothing. Buchholz, who threw seven shutout innings

Of all the people to remind Terry Francona how much he missed managing, it was Eric Hinske. Francona doesn't know why him, why then. It was the middle of the season, and he was walking through the Atlanta Braves' clubhouse before a game, and he ran into Hinske, one of his old charges on the 2007 Boston Red Sox championship team, and Francona wondered, at that moment, what the hell he was doing wearing a sport coat and makeup instead of a baseball uniform.

After a difficult end to his Boston days, manager Terry Francona is back where he belongs. (Getty Images)This game: It is Terry Francona's addiction. After his nasty divorce from the Red Sox, he jumped right back in, interviewing for the St. Louis Cardinals managing job, and when he didn't get that, he said he needed time to gather some perspective, which meant staying on the periphery as a broadcaster. And soon enough, because he was trying to be more honest with himself – because he was trying to shake off the stink of that final season in Boston – he realized this search was for naught.

"I don't have any perspective," Francona said. "I

Josh Hamilton isn't living up to his huge contract with the Angels. (USA Today Sports)

Less than a year ago, Josh Hamilton hit 3,621 feet worth of home runs in one week. He was the best baseball player on the planet, and nobody offered much of an argument. Not Mike Trout, who was barely back in the major leagues from Triple-A, nor Miguel Cabrera, coming off an April in which he didn't hit .300. It was Hamilton alone, thanks to 18 home runs in 31 games and a swing that looked as if it never met failure.

Then came the rest of his season – the .252 batting average, the sub-.500 slugging percentage, the copious strikeouts (134 in 440 at-bats, a higher rate than Adam Dunn over his career), the blaming struggles on blue eyes and chewing tobacco, the dropped fly ball, the booing in Texas and, finally, Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno playing TARP to Hamilton's AIG with a five-year, $125 million bit of heavenly manna.

Following the Angels' 31st game Sunday, all of the I-told-you-so'ers and Schadenfreudophiles are wearing permagrins at the failure that has been the

Matt Moore got fined a nominal chunk of change by Major League Baseball on Thursday for speaking out in favor of his friend on Twitter, and if that happens to be the going cost of honesty, he will accept it. One of the great byproducts of the 23-year-old's coming-out party this season with the Tampa Bay Rays is that no longer do the shackles of rookiedom or youthfulness keep him from telling his truth.

Like, say, about the inefficiency of the restaurant business.

Unlike other young Rays before him, Matt Moore is expected to be with the team for a while. (Getty Images)"I like eating good food, but I don't like dealing with, 'Oh, it's going to be a couple minutes 'til your table is ready,' and the small talk that goes along with it," Moore said. "Like, coaxing the waiter to make sure they're not going to spit in your food. And, 'Oh, we'll take your drink order now,' even though I'm the type of person who knows what I want when I get there, so I'm ready to order first thing. And it's going to take, what, an hour and a half to eat dinner? If I'm at home, I can be done cooking and eating in like