The shenanigans started with an ill-advised mound charge. They ended with a superstar's threat: "We'll see, bitch." And in between, a brawl unspooled, a $147 million pitcher broke his collarbone, a manager erupted and a feud unlikely to abate anytime soon mushroomed into the biggest to-do of the young baseball season.

Oh, fertilizer.

There is no shame aping a phrase from the great Vin Scully when it so appropriately describes what happened Thursday night at Petco Park: Los Angeles Dodgers star Zack Greinke broke his left collarbone trying to take on San Diego Padres outfielder/linebacker Carlos Quentin, who charged the mound to extricate years of pent-up frustration over being hit by Greinke twice before.

Benches emptied, the teams did a do-si-do and it seemed to calm down until Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp found out the Greinke-Quentin collision left the right-hander clutching his clavicle on the way to an X-ray machine. Kemp proceeded to drop a fleet of

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Early this spring, James Shields and David Price were texting like they always do. For the first time in five years, they weren't in camp together, weren't wearing matching uniforms, weren't even in the same state. Price wanted to update Shields about the latest antics at Tampa Bay Rays camp. And Shields wanted to let Price know what life is like outside the comfort of the Rays bubble.

In James Shields, the Royals weren't just seeking a quality pitcher but also a culture change. (Getty Images)"It's different here," he said, and it wasn't a slight to his new team, the Kansas City Royals, as much as it was a truth. Everywhere is different than Tampa Bay, and especially Kansas City, which has seen one winning season and 12 with 90 or more losses since the 1994 strike. He was going to change things, he told Price. He needed to.

For an organization run by quants, the Rays' clubhouse reflects a very different sentiment: a deep, strong belief in the power of team chemistry, a piece of which the Royals believed they were buying when they gave up Wil Myers, arguably the best

Justin Upton didn't take long to get comfortable in Atlanta's lineup. (Getty Images)

Sometime during his first six seasons, Justin Upton earned a reputation as a loafer. The Atlanta Braves understood this when they traded for him this offseason. They understood, too, a very important distinction: such reputations often get assigned erroneously and stick unfairly.

Justin Upton is not a loafer, was not a loafer and, absent some sort of change in his makeup, never will be a loafer. The Braves believed this, which is why they were downright giddy when it became apparent the Arizona Diamondbacks would deal Upton because of concerns about his effort. And though Braves officials felt their intuition on Upton correct from the moment he arrived at camp this spring, they look back now on March 16 as a seminal moment.

It was more than halfway through spring training. Restlessness pervaded Braves camp. Why is the axiom that spring stats mean nothing true? Because by the middle, everyone just wants to go golfing or go home. Upton happened to be playing that day against

This week at Koshien, the twice-a-year national high school baseball tournament that is to Japan what the World Series is to American baseball fans, a 16-year-old boy named Tomohiro Anraku threw 772 pitches. During the final game Wednesday, Anraku, whose fastball reached 94 mph earlier in the tournament, labored to crack 80. It was his third consecutive day starting a game and his fourth in five days, and those came after his first start of the tournament, in which he threw 232 pitches over 13 innings. Tomohiro Anraku delivers a pitch during Koshien. (AP)

When word of Anraku's exploits filtered out from Koshien Stadium, the reaction depended on proximity. Nearby, in the Japanese baseball culture that equates pitch count with superiority, Anraku was a hero. Far away, in an American baseball culture that has seen more elbows and shoulders blow out than ever before, Anraku was the picture of excess. For a man who bridges the societies, Anraku represented something much more unsavory. 

"This is child abuse," said Don Nomura, a longtime

Having mastered the music world, marriage, fatherhood, clothing lines and custom booze, Jay-Z, the Midas of the new millennium, is venturing into a world far more cutthroat than anything he ever saw in the Marcy Projects: the agent business.

Jay-Z (middle) and Robinson Cano (right) greet each other at the 2009 East finals in Cleveland. (Getty Images)And the New York Yankees couldn’t be happier. Because the move almost ensures Robinson Cano isn't going anywhere.

The star second baseman left agent Scott Boras to join the new collaboration between Jay-Z's new Roc Nation Sports arm and its partner, the powerful Creative Artists Agency. And while Jay-Z will grab the headlines for his presence in the deal, far more important is CAA's poaching of Cano and what it portends for his future.

Quite simply: CAA encourages contract extensions, Boras reveres free agency.

A look at CAA's client list shows nearly every big-name player it represents agrees to an extension before hitting free agency. Buster Posey signed an eight-year deal this week. Twice Ryan Braun has re-upped with Milwaukee. Same

Someone was going to give Justin Verlander the $200 million he wanted. The free-agent market is baseball's Bellevue, and teams go particularly mad for elite players. The Detroit Tigers knew this, and before anyone else had the opportunity, they broke the game's first rule of fiscal responsibility: Do not give pitchers long-term contracts.

The seven-year, $180 million contract they guaranteed Verlander on Friday (with a $22 million vesting option that could kick it over $200 million) set a new record for a pitcher. This is the market. The market is stupid. The players' association and agents did a brilliant job of setting it such that top position players and pitchers make about the same amount of money, even though every pitcher should get FRAGILE tattooed onto the arm with which he throws.

That, the Tigers and others believe, is where Verlander differs. Never mind we're exactly a day removed from Johan Santana, a bastion of durability during his Cy Young years with

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – From his perch atop the shortstop phylum, Troy Tulowitzki peers down and sees something very different from what he grew up watching. When Tulo was a teenager, the shortstop position was in the middle of not just a renaissance but a revolution. For a position so romanticized, it had subsisted with a Murderers' Row of mediocre hitters. Not in the '90s. Not with the big three.

Troy Tulowitzki is a defensive wizard, but it's his offense that makes him special. (AP Photo)Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra and Alex Rodriguez, the story went, would forever change the position. Jeter reinforced what Cal Ripken Jr. had proven: shortstop didn't have a height cutoff. And Garciaparra, though not as tall, was bigger than Jeter and brought an element of batsmanship to the position unseen since, what, Arky Vaughan? And then there was A-Rod: the archetype, the T-1000, as if molded from liquid metal and shaped to play short at a caliber no one could fathom.

And now? Now it's just Tulo, all alone, the best shortstop on the planet by a wide margin as the position flows

San Francisco's Pablo Sandoval might miss opening day next week with an elbow injury. (AP)

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Pablo Sandoval came to San Francisco Giants camp fat this year, like he does pretty much every year, because there are two truths about Pablo Sandoval, and one of them is he does not do skinny.

The other is that he's a remarkable hitter, preternaturally gifted like only a handful of players, maybe less. At 5-foot-11 (give or take – no, take – two inches) and 262 pounds (give or take – no, give – 20 pounds), Sandoval hits everything everywhere anytime anywhere. If anyone in baseball today is going to stroke a single off a pitch that bounces before it reaches home plate, it's him.

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This is Sandoval's dichotomy, what makes him who he is – and the relationship between the two may be parasitic. Sandoval does not hit like a madman because he's fat. It could be argued he's fat because he hits like a madman – because his success in spite of his weight gives him little motivation to shed it, and