Draft day is the best day of the year. For eight hours, my friends and I drink cold beverages, indulge in food fit for a study on clogged arteries and hold our annual fantasy baseball draft. Only a 50-inch HDTV could make the day any better, and, by heavens, we had one of those this year, too.

We did not discuss right-to-publicity law and how it applies to fantasy sports. We did not talk about licensing, legalities or lawsuits. In fact, the only time we've talked about anything to do with justice was in 1995 when we threatened to send our friend Bruce to fantasy prison for wasting a pick on an A-ball pitcher named Bart Evans.

Yet all fantasy players should at least be aware of what's bubbling in their leagues' background, because it could transform the industry: It's a grab for money and control, a play of greed, an entree into the ugly sides of baseball to which fantasy sports seemed immune.

In February, the owners of CDM Sports sued Major League Baseball Advanced Media, baseball's

For his 21st birthday, Felix Hernandez already knows what he wants from the Seattle Mariners.

"My slider," he said.

He misses it. See, Hernandez, who turned 20 a little more than a week ago and has the bravado to nickname himself "El Cartelua" – which, for lack of a better word, means "badass" – is not allowed to throw the pitch. The Mariners, just like every other team, have seen dozens of pitchers' careers wrecked because of arm injuries. They want him to throw his 97-mph fastball. They love his changeup. And they think his curveball might be the best pitch he throws.

But no slider. Not yet. Not even if it is a 90-mph mirage.

"Hell, yeah, I want to throw that pitch," Hernandez said. "They don't let me, though. They tell my I'm too young, that it's bad for my elbow. I told them I want to throw it."

Begrudgingly, Hernandez complies, because though he has the orneriness of a star, he's not a malcontent. Hernandez understands that he poses the toughest question in baseball: How do you

While he is a fairly stubborn man – Pedro Martinez did, remember, insist on toting around his midget friend during the Red Sox's 2004 World Series run – feistiness cannot save an aging arm.

And it's with that in mind that Martinez pitches these days for the New York Mets, currently baseball's best team, throwing fastballs at 85 and 86 mph and other speeds that would only draw a warning from a forgiving traffic cop.

Tonight, when Martinez goes for his 200th career victory, it will be easy to remember the Pedro of old, who, starting with his first Cy Young Award in 1997, strung together a seven-year stretch equaled only by Sandy Koufax. Martinez's surname was immaterial. He was Pedro, the mightiest of mites at 5-foot-11 and 150 pounds, and he blew everyone away with the indifference of a sniper. Challenge that fact, and he might give you a 97-mph buzzcut. In his fifth major-league start, Martinez lost a perfect game with one out in the eighth inning when he hit Reggie Sanders on an 0-2

Before this story gets to the part where the kid lands his dream job because of a video game, some tired fingers and Bill Buckner, let's go back about 20 years.

On Oct. 25, 1986, Conor Lastowka was 5 years old. He lived in Virginia, and bedtime was long before the final out of the World Series' sixth game between the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets.

"I wasn't old enough to even watch the game," Lastowka said. "I first saw it during college junior year on ESPN Classic. That year was the 15th anniversary of it. I watched it three times in 24 hours."

In his four years at the University of Virginia, Lastowka did all sorts of nothing, the most benign of which was obsessing over the classic Mets comeback and Red Sox heartbreak. Beyond that, Lastowka argued with his friends that automobiles should have U-turn signals. He drew a comic for the student newspaper that was an ode to a deceased friend who, actually, was alive. He started National High Five Day, a heal-the-world movement that

BOSTON – David Ortiz strolled into the press conference that announced his $50 million contract extension earlier this week wearing the Gross National Product of a small country in diamonds. Fat ones weighted down each ear, about 25 smaller ones hung in a necklace, petite ones encrusted his watch and an uncountable number shone from a bracelet.

"You can get diamonds like that, too," Ortiz said Friday. "You've got to make $50 million first."

Ortiz laughed, and it was no ordinary laugh. It echoed around the Boston Red Sox clubhouse, loud and cacophonous and addicting. It was as coy as wearing half a million bucks or so in jewelry, and it was vintage Big Papi.

Subtlety doesn't exist in David Ortiz's world. Everything is big. His laugh and his bling. His car (a $280,000 Mercedes) and his swing (a looping uppercut into which he thrusts all of his weight, listed at a kindly 230 pounds). His life is one big carnival, and he's the kid walking around with the biggest stuffed animal.

"I'm a

NEW YORK – Twenty-five years ago, this game meant something. When the New York Yankees played the Kansas City Royals, no one snickered. It wasn't The Boss' $200 Million All-Stars against David Glass' Wal-Mart Washouts. It was the two best teams in the American League engaging in series after epic series.

"It was as good as any matchup," Reggie Jackson said Wednesday. "Because both teams had the people. Without the people, there's nothing. If the Red Sox were in last place, the rivalry would go away. We don't enjoy crushing bad teams."

On Wednesday, the Yankees, who have the people, did crush the Royals, who are a pretty bad team, 12-5 at Yankee Stadium. The Royals are baseball Benadryl, the team that gets you through a cold spell. And every time they play the Yankees, it's impossible to watch the game and not wonder how two franchises can look so different.

Ultimately, the discussion comes back to money, and while that's a simplistic view to take – the Yankees' successes and the

NEW YORK – Before he got to first, he blew a bubble. Derek Jeter had just hit a home run to push the New York Yankees ahead in their home opener, and of all the things to do, he huffed until a bright pink globe of Bazooka formed. Maybe it was a conscious move, and maybe it wasn't. It was most certainly classic Jeter.

He treats the extraordinary with such nonchalance it becomes ordinary. World Series rings? The Yankees should win them. The Play that nabbed Jeremy Giambi at home? Just did what he was supposed to do.

Game-winning home runs? Blow a bubble.

Once again, Jeter proved in Tuesday's 9-7 victory over Kansas City that no matter who the Yankees buy from the free-agent market or import via trade, he is the prince, the king and, most of all, the captain.

"People would take him No. 1 on any team," said Johnny Damon, one of those high-priced free agents, "because you know on a daily basis he's going to do something."

In Tuesday's instance, it was bailing out Damon from a three-pitch

CHICAGO – The master was watching The Masters.

Greg Maddux had shoehorned himself into a chair, knees tucked into chest, neck craned at the plasma screen high on the wall of the Chicago Cubs' clubhouse. Not the ideal ergonomic pose for a man who turns 40 a week from today, though Maddux has made a living of doing things the tough way.

"If you ask me," he said, "this is the best of both worlds. The Masters. A win. Good day."

While visions of grandeur abounded outside Wrigley Field after the Cubs' 5-1 victory against St. Louis in their home opener – "This is the team!" cried one man drunk on the Cubbies and Old Style – Maddux, pitching deity he is, rested. He won his 319th game Friday with a combination of guile and savvy and all of the other adjectives that make Maddux sound more like an elite sniper than a for-the-ages pitcher.

Come to think of it, it's Maddux's ability to hit any spot that separates him from his predecessors, contemporaries and successors, what keeps him around