CHICAGO – This is a story about waiting. It was Opening Night here Sunday, the world champion Chicago White Sox hosting the Cleveland Indians, and a blinding rain postponed the game for 2 hours, 57 minutes.

Though, really, what were a few hours when you've been waiting 503,670?

That is approximately how long it's been since Cleveland last won the World Series on Oct. 6, 1948. Other important numbers we've seen since then – 252,000,000 (dollars to Alex Rodriguez), 867-5309 (digits for Jenny), 2,632 (straight games by Cal Ripken Jr.), 2001 (A Space Odyssey), 73 (homers by Barry Bonds – or was that the number of steroids he allegedly took?), 21 (other franchises winning World Series), 14 (leap days), 10 (presidents) and one (and only one) Ozzie Guillen – matter little to Clevelanders in the context of half a million hours waiting for a championship.

Waiting is miserable. We fidget when we stand in line for 10 minutes. We stare intently at the handheld buzzers in crowded restaurants,

11:34 a.m. CDT – Welcome to Opening Day. I will be your humble tour guide for those sitting at work wishing they were at the ballpark, those sitting at school wishing they were anywhere else or those who are simply slackers and don't care enough to wish.

Happily count me among the latter today. Heaven is a tracksuit, a futon cushion and a connection to MLB.TV, on which I'll be hopping from game to game and filling in with constant updates. It's like Dan Wetzel did with the NCAA Tournament. Only I'm not pounding 437 beers. And my dad isn't along for the ride. Special guest stars here are my girlfriend and her mother, and they will be chiming in with their, um, expert opinions.

First game up is Mets-Nationals. Less than an hour until the first pitch. Because of Pedro Martinez's toe injury that kept him out most of the spring, Tom Glavine starts for the Mets. He turned 40 last week, and it's amazing to see the number of players – left-handed starters, particularly – pitching into their

CHICAGO – Late Sunday night, when the rain finally cleared, Jim Thome hit a home run. Remember, now, there is a difference between a home run and a Jim Thome home run. A home run clears the outfield fence. A Jim Thome home run clears the stadium's ZIP code.

This particular Jim Thome home run, the 431st of his career, traveled an estimated 431 feet. It looked longer, probably because a 3-hour rain delay had almost hijacked Opening Night, and the remaining 5,000 or so amphibious fans at U.S. Cellular Field would have cheered a pop-up. Anything to see their Chicago White Sox.

By 1:10 a.m., when the defending champions closed out their 10-4 victory against Cleveland, the crowd had gotten more Sox than showers, more fun than a Second City show – and, more than anything, their first dose of Thome wearing black and white.

Healthy, playing in his home state, opposing his old team for the first time in his career, Thome was a bundle of emotions. Excited that his back and elbow aren't sore.

Carlos Beltran figures he received about $11.5 million worth of boos last year. That was what the New York Mets paid him in the first year of his $119 million contract, one that, by the end of Beltran's injury-pocked season, Mets fans rued.

Yet here Beltran stands, more than a year after he boldly glossed his new team "The New Mets," defiant, excited, ready.

"It's a new season," Beltran said. "You hope to stay healthy. You hope to play well. It's about hope."

Opening Day, at its root, is about hope. The World Series champion Chicago White Sox will host division rival Cleveland in the season's first game Sunday night, and Monday is the season's official dawn. Thirteen cities will see baseball live for the first time in more than five months, thirteen more will get their tastes on television, and all of them will do nothing more than hope.

They will hope for a victory that day and another after that so it's a winning streak, a grand month to start the season well. For hitters and

CLEARWATER, Fla. – More than 3,000 times this season, their eyes will lock. Josh Beckett, up 10 inches on the pitching mound, will peer down at Jason Varitek, and they will have an unspoken conversation.

The most important relationship in baseball isn't between a hitter and his bat or a fielder and his glove or a player's needle and his butt cheek. It's the pitcher-catcher dynamic, one that demands rapport, respect and, most of all, results.

"You don't want to hate the guy," Beckett said. "It would be like trying to do a kissing scene in a movie with a girl you used to date."

If Varitek is Brad Pitt in Boston, he can only hope Beckett isn't Jennifer Aniston. Beckett is the new ace in town, 25 years old, a Texan blessed with a powerful arm, a proven playoff winner and poised to take over as the Red Sox's No. 1 starter when Curt Schilling leaves, or possibly sooner. Varitek is the veteran catcher, 34 in April, a two-time All-Star, a Gold Glove winner, such a presence that the Red Sox

If George Mitchell's investigation into steroid use in baseball is as fair, impartial and thorough as Major League Baseball promises, there can be only one result.

Bud Selig's resignation.

And that's what makes this whole exercise laughable, nothing more than a case of poorly executed crisis P.R. Any worthwhile investigation does not seek only information, as Selig announced baseball's would do Thursday. It lays blame. Instead of attacking the arms that flail in every direction, it goes for a kill shot to the head. At the end of this, if the truth and nothing but the truth were told, Selig would be too embarrassed to continue as baseball's commissioner.

Of course, that won't happen. The investigation will last a few months and, by all indications, focus almost solely on players and distributors. It may uncover a skeleton or two. Baseball will parade those around like trophies, much as it does all of its minor victories. Barring some kind of a bombshell that almost certainly would have

TAMPA, Fla. – Derek Jeter keeps his four World Series rings in a safe-deposit box. He doesn't need any more reminders that it's been five seasons since the Yankees won a World Series.

"It seems like it's been longer," he said.

Everywhere Jeter looks, he sees the past. Ex-Yankee Tino Martinez threw out a first pitch this week at Legends Field. Banners fly commemorating the championships. Fans thank Jeter for the memories, and he remembers they're just that: Gone but for a fistful of diamond jewelry.

In the first year of the drought, 2001, the Yankees' payroll crept over $100 million for the first time. Since that season, George Steinbrenner has spent $783,466,307 on players and has nothing to show for it.

"You're spoiled," Jeter said. "You still realize how hard it is. I was the first one to say while we were winning that it's difficult to do. You need the breaks to go your way. Since then, we've been to two more World Series. Just hasn't happened for us."

As Opening Day approaches, the

JUPITER, Fla. – Rickey Henderson is still delusional.

Phew.

An injection of Rickey every so often is good for the soul. It reminds us that personalities make baseball great, and Rickey – lip-flapping, self-aggrandizing and earnestly narcissistic to the end – is an all-timer.

Just ask him.

"Teams won't give me tryouts because most of them know I'll make the club," Rickey said Tuesday, on assignment here as a baserunning coach for the New York Mets. "If I don't make a club, I know I'm done. But I've still got that question mark. Look out here."

Rickey gazed around Roger Dean Stadium.

"I can play with these kids."

Maybe that was code for "most of them could actually be my kids."

Rickey is 47, and he is serious about coming back, even if no one else is. Rickey believes someone needs him. And he's right.

We need Rickey's innocence.

He popped out of the dugout Tuesday wearing a gleaming Mets uniform, a warmup jacket and a hat. He stretched with the players and laughed with them. He trotted