Were this story to start with my stomach doing a loop-de-loop, it would not sufficiently explain how I tried to stifle the aging process, so let's instead begin with the two-pound omelet and work from there.

Every morning, Julio Franco takes 20 or so eggs, separates the whites from the yolks and cooks them into a big, fluffy cloud of protein. Julio is a backup first baseman and reliable pinch hitter for the New York Mets. When he struts around the Mets' clubhouse bare-chested, his torso tapers into a V-shape and his arms resemble those of a lumberjack. And best anyone can tell, he turns 48 years old Wednesday, though he may be 50 or 51 or older. Coming from the Dominican Republic, where birth documents aren't wholly reliable, not even Julio is sure.

Medical professionals, teammates and managers have tried to explain how Julio hit pause on his body and continued to play baseball at a competitive level long past that of any previous regular big leaguer who didn't throw a knuckleball or

Because the Arabian American Little League team is so used to getting stares – a 13-year-old who stands 6-foot-8 tends to draw attention – the players and their parents didn't mind doing a little gawking of their own last week.

When they pulled their rental cars in Newark, N.J., onto the Garden State Parkway and en route to the Little League World Series, they passed their first gas station.

Sticker shock, thy name is gas prices.

"We pay 75 cents or 80 cents a gallon," said James Durley, coach of the team from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which has cruised through its first two games in Williamsport, Pa., and will try to lock up first place in its pool today at 6 p.m. Eastern against the unbeaten Cardenales Little League from Venezuela.

"It's painful here."

Durley left North America with his family five years ago to move to Dhahran, essentially a small compound city that houses families who work for Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company. Along with Durley's son Aaron, the 6-foot-8

CHICAGO – The trip from St. Louis to Memphis was a lonely one. It's almost 5 hours by car, a straight shot down Interstate 55, or an hour by plane, and whether by land or air, it seemed to last much longer for Chris Duncan.

No amount of time can quantify the difference between the major leagues and Triple-A, a trek trod by Duncan twice this year. And it was not that Duncan became a better player on his last trip to Memphis, because he didn't, and it was not that the third time was a charm, because it wasn't. What, then, to explain Chris Duncan, a 25-year-old rookie, outhomering, outslugging and outhitting Albert Pujols, of all people, since his call-up to St. Louis on July 3?

"For some reason, my whole career, August has always been my best month," Duncan said, and it might be a reasonable explanation if there weren't a better one.

He's actually getting to play.

Over the last six weeks, Duncan has started 31 games. He has socked 11 home runs in 128 at-bats, gotten on base more than 43

Adultery! Teenage mistresses! Gambling! Oh, what lurid tabloid fodder New York Mets catcher Paul Lo Duca has provided the last two weeks. And how he must ever wish he could page Doc Brown, crank up the DeLorean and send himself back 20 years.

“Had Lo Duca played with us, it wouldn’t have even been a footnote,” says Bobby Ojeda, and by “us” he means the 1986 Mets, baseball’s boozers, users and, according to legend, feline abusers. Ojeda is talking from his New Jersey home about an hour from Shea Stadium, where Saturday the Mets will celebrate the 20-year anniversary of their World Series victory. And while he admits time inflates all good stories, he knows the years haven’t exactly been kind to the ’86 Mets’.

In those two decades, the headlines have trumpeted drugs, drink, steroids, rape, spousal abuse, suicidal thoughts, prison, bankruptcy, sexism, sexual harassment, DWI, battery, animal cruelty and, yes, gambling. The most famous stemmed from Dwight Gooden, unable to make the reunion

CHICAGO – Another Jason Giambi.

Mark Teahen was called that once. During the preparation for the 2002 draft, the Oakland Athletics' scouting director, Eric Kubota, said if there were someone in the class who could develop like Giambi – from a big, strong singles hitter into a powerful corner infielder – it was Teahen. And this is public knowledge only because the A’s opened their doors that year to author Michael Lewis, who chronicled Oakland’s methods in the seminal book “Moneyball.”

“I’d like to say I’m past all of it,” Teahen said, “but it’s always going to be with me. It’s always going to be with all of us.”

It’s been more than four years since the Moneyball draft, in which the A’s had seven first- and sandwich-round picks, and their modus operandi that day still divides even the greatest baseball minds. Considering Oakland selected all college players, with the idea they were closer to the big leagues and safer bets, it seems like a fair time to look back at that draft,

CHICAGO – He talks like a kid raised on the principles of Local 2201, and maybe that's because Justin Verlander spent countless hours in a stroller on picket lines. His father, Richard, was the president of the Communication Workers of America union in Richmond, Va., and foolish is the group that doesn't trot out children to curry sympathy.

There is something about union kids, a savvy borne of every shop's code of togetherness. It's why at 23 years old, in his rookie season, Justin Verlander talks about the Major League Baseball Players Association, long considered one of the nation's strongest unions, if not the most formidable, in reverential terms instead of asking why his paycheck gets docked $40 a day for dues.

"The people before me worked hard to get what we have now in the system," Verlander said. "If you don't take advantage of that and learn and realize what the previous guys went through to get where we are now, you can't appreciate it."

Oh, how his dad loves to hear that.

The hero gets everything. The glory, the admiration – and, apparently, the bar tab.

So it went for Los Angeles Dodgers rookie Russell Martin on Sunday night after he punctuated a classic pitchers’ duel with a walk-off home run to lead off the 10th inning for a 1-0 victory and sweep of the rival San Francisco Giants. Martin and fellow Rookie of the Year candidate Andre Ethier went to Hollywood to celebrate, and instead of free drinks, they were greeted with a bill that Ethier handed to Martin.

“Whoever’s the hero,” Ethier said, “has to be the hero at the bar, too.”

If that’s the case, rookies are spending an awful lot of money on drinks this season.

Both leagues have seen an influx of young talent this year, perhaps the greatest haul to arrive at one time in the last 25 seasons, and maybe even longer. Three executives and two scouts surveyed by Yahoo! Sports certainly thought so, pointing not only to the class’ extraordinary depth but also its top-level stars.

Almost instantly, the

Funny how this game works. Ned Colletti, the general manger for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has spent 25 years in baseball. And even when instinct tells him to celebrate, like it does as the Dodgers continue their stunning ascent from the National League West basement to the top of the division, he remembers the sage words of former commissioner Bart Giamatti.

“It's designed to break your heart,” Giamatti liked to say.

Cynicism is a slice of reality, and usually a hearty one. And to follow Giamatti’s particular advice is to fight emotion, which is a battle most would prefer to avoid. Yet it’s also the reason why the Dodgers are looking down at their four NL West peers: Because Colletti, for all of his stoicism at the zenith, was just as even-keeled at the Dodgers’ nadir.

“It was tough to watch every day,” Colletti said.

He’s being kind. A little more than two weeks ago, the Dodgers were in one mother of a funk: nine straight losses, 13 of the first 14 after the All-Star break, written off