Yahoo! Sports' Jeff Passan chronicled opening day from his couch. E-mail questions/comments to him at itsopeningday@yahoo.com.

Noon EDT: Welcome to Year 2 of the opening day notebook. For those who missed it last season, the premise is rather simple: Since Corporate America, evil witch she is, tethers you to a cubicle on the greatest day of the year, I'll pick up the slack by following all of the games on MLB.TV and keeping you abreast of what the box scores don't say.

While I cannot imagine pontificating for two days on the virtues of a 90-foot-tall statue of a man named Oral, this isn't just about baseball, either. Encouraged topics of discussion include The Sopranos and Entourage (returning this Sunday), great mustaches (in honor of former Indians pitcher Rich Yett), superior pork products (I say bacon, Mark the Editor prefers ham) and what I should order for lunch (with pizza, last year's choice, in the early lead, seeing as Chicago's South Loop offers little in the way of delivery

ST. LOUIS – A buzz coursed through the new Busch Stadium, the kind that portends something special. Yadier Molina, the catcher who had propelled the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series, waddled toward the plate Sunday night with the bases loaded in the first game of the 2007 season, and it was against the New York Mets, no less, the team Molina bounced from the playoffs with one swing last year.

Surely Tom Glavine, who stood on the mound, heard the din. He had watched the pregame celebration of the Cardinals' championship and seen Molina's home run off Aaron Heilman in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. The video board played it at least a dozen times in the hour leading up to the game, nothing compared to the hundreds of times the Mets did in their heads this offseason.

It was after Game 1 of the NLCS that Albert Pujols, the game's greatest hitter, had besmirched Glavine's seven shutout innings, saying, "He wasn't good," and repeating it, just in case people hadn't

CLEARWATER, Fla. – Until he retires and returns to the land of normal-sized people, Jimmy Rollins will spend the majority of his life as the shortest person in the Philadelphia Phillies' clubhouse.

"Ever since I was a kid I was the shortest," Rollins said. "And I didn't care. I just got things done. I never hoped I'd grow taller or hoped I'd hit with more power. I don't need to hope.

"Actually, I am hoping for one thing this year."

Surely it would make sense that his hope is for the Phillies to match his expectations, because everyone in the baseball world knows them well by now. Rollins buzzed the entire National League by proclaiming the Phillies the favorites in the NL East over the New York Mets. Given a chance to relent, he never did.

No, he came on stronger.

"I hope," Rollins said, "that the Mets are ready for us."

If so, it adds another subplot to a 2007 season already rich in them – a season, like every other, full of hope.

Hope that Daisuke Matsuzaka is as good as he has

LAKELAND, Fla. – It looks like Carl Pavano is going to start on Opening Day for the New York Yankees.

(Right.)

That's a joke. You're supposed to laugh.

(Sorry. It's true.)

Wait. Carl Pavano, who last threw in a major league game June 27, 2005? Carl Pavano, who was so reviled by teammates that earlier this spring Mike Mussina took a Ginsu to what was left of his reputation? Carl Pavano, who pulled off the rare feat of having a pain in the ass (bruised buttocks) and being one?

(Carla herself.)

What in the name of Hensley Meulens is going on in the Bronx?

(Remember, Chicken Little, it's just one game. Yet Opening Day still is supposed to be loaded with promise and anticipation and potential, and if Pavano best exemplifies that for the Yankees, WFAN's phone lines might spontaneously combust. It's not even April 1, and Chien-Ming Wang's hamstring injury has left the Yankees looking particularly vulnerable for the season's first month.)

Which, excepting the 2005 season, has been a bountiful

LAKELAND, Fla. – Less than a year ago, Chris Shelton, a little-known first baseman, went on one of the greatest hitting jags baseball has ever seen. In the Detroit Tigers' first nine games, he smacked seven home runs. He added a pair over the next four. For two weeks, he made Babe Ruth meager, red hair cool and the Tigers into a team that believed in itself.

And today, in all likelihood, he's going to be sent to the minor leagues – again.

"I never forgot how to hit," Shelton said Sunday afternoon, and he said it with such confidence it was easy to miss the hidden lament.

What should be the greatest accomplishment of Shelton's professional career has turned, rather cruelly, into his greatest pox.

Over the first 13 games, he hit .471 with nine home runs, 17 RBIs and a slugging percentage that looked more like a currency exchange rate (1.216). In his final 102 games – during which he slumped through June, lost his starting job when the Tigers acquired Sean Casey in July and endured a

Yahoo! Sports: N.L. East Preview

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – He was alone with a bucket of balls, a target and his thoughts. It was well into March, and Mark Redman, still unemployed, couldn't help but wonder how, in an offseason when everyone cashed in a Powerball ticket, he somehow got the $1 scratch-off.

So he tried to focus on the target. When everyone else was in Florida and Arizona, Redman would wake up in Tulsa, Okla., head to his 6,700-square-foot basement, open the door to a 70-foot tunnel, step on the mound and pitch to batters that didn't exist.

Simulated games usually have at least a catcher. Not Redman's. He would toss eight warm-up pitches toward a screen, then began throwing like a real game. He counted bad pitches as hits and incorporated a few extras for foul balls. When he felt satisfied with his "inning," he walked to the end of the tunnel, picked up the balls, subtracted eight for the warm-ups and calculated his pitch count. And then he trudged back, did it three more

Yahoo! Sports: N.L. West Preview

VERO BEACH, Fla. – Jeff Kent pirouetted slowly in the Los Angeles Dodgers' clubhouse, carefully considering each name and number in the room.

"No. No. No," he said, crossing teammates off his mental list. "Right there."

He pointed toward Olmedo Saenz.

"Only one."

Actually, Kent was missing Brad Penny and Yhency Brazoban, but he made his point anyway: Kent has been with the Dodgers since 2005, and the only longer-tenured Dodgers than him are Saenz, who joined the team at the beginning of the 2004 season, plus Penny and the currently injured Brazoban, who came on midseason.

Even more stunning: Vin Scully, the Dodgers' radio broadcaster in his 58th year, has 17 years more service time than the team's entire 40-man roster, which, even when assigning a year to someone like Delwyn Young – who had five at-bats last season – still adds up to only 41 years.

The Dodgers are Team Transient, the epitome of what can happen when owners open their purse strings for a

VIERA, Fla. – Sometimes there are those telephone conversations you wish took place face to face. The person on the other end is so incredulous, so frustrated, so spitting angry that you know he is sporting a look – like the worst bitter-beer face known to man – words can't do justice.

"Where does all this 130-loss stuff come from, all this silliness about the '62 Mets?" said Washington Nationals president Stan Kasten, the example in this particular case.

Kasten is unhappy. See, the Nationals probably are not going to be good this year. They have a chance to be really not good. Some believe they will be really, really not good.

Like worst-team-ever not good.

And people around baseball love to exaggerate, so bad turns into really bad turns into historically bad, and numbers start getting assigned, one scout positing the Nationals could be worse than the '62 New York Mets, who went 40-120, another suggesting it may be 130 losses, and when that gets into the media, well, people like