E.K. NATION

...and we are sure many of you have, because of the media's unwillingness to provide the name of accusers in rape cases that make the news, the name of the accuser in the Duke lacrosse team rape case is Crystal Mangum.

We would like to invite you all to join in the hijinks at Jacks Vs. Eights, a new blog devoted specifically to poker, written by us ourselves (and we promise that over there, we will be speaking in first person, and not in the very-irritating "royal we" format. We plan to make poker our profession someday soon -- one of the few departments in life where we are ridiculously optimistic -- and we will document every frustrating moment of the process therewith.

• Here's what Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes should have named their baby: "Overrated Baby."

• Handy tip: If you're ever approached by a TV news crew and you don't want your face to be shown on TV and they won't leave you alone, put up an extended middle finger right in front of your face and keep it there. If they want to broadcast that footage, they'll have to blur out the image of the flip-off, which means they'll have to blur out your face too.

• Come on Giants! You're supposed to beat the Diamondbacks, like, a bunch of times! Get it together and salvage a split tonight. Jamey Wright's going tonight; he's done well in his first two games as a Gigante. And we don't want to hear about how Barry can't hit homers anymore; have you seen the rockets he has set off? He just happens to have hit them to the deepest parts of the field lately.

• Did the Diamondbacks really have three pitchers named Brandon pitch last night? When was the last time a team had three or more pitchers throw in the same game all with the same name? Somebody: Do some research on this.

• Some people are saying a shoe created by Adidas is racist. Got news for you: Shoes can not be racist. Shoes are inanimate objects. They have no opinions or beliefs. Racism is a belief, and a human belief only.

• We're sticking with our pre-season pick of Philadelphia and Nashville in the Stanley Cup Finals, but we're going to go ahead and abandon all notions that the Indiana Pacers will make it to the NBA Finals to play San Antonio. It'll be Detroit instead. Yeah, yeah, we go out on a limb here. The NBA playoffs are way, way too drawn out. Four teams from each conference would be just fine. Come on: Does anyone really believe the Milwaukee Bucks, with a record of 40 wins and 42 losses, belong in the playoffs? Why does this have to happen? Why do the Pistons have to spend four games exerting effort and energy to eliminate a team like that from a tournament it has no buisness being in?

• Katharine McPhee is the most attractive woman on the planet. Welcome to the E.K. Nation Babe Hall Of fame, Katharine. Class of '06 baby!

• Speaking of American Idol, during the audition shows this past winter, we predicted (although not on this blog; it was in an e-mail to a friend) that Taylor Hicks would be crowned the new American Idol this season. That's a pretty good prediction as it stands, dontcha think? But to be fair we did say on this blog that Ace Young had a good chance to win. Now that he is gone, we're looking for Kellie to be voted out next week. It's time.

...we're getting a silly amount of attention from prominent folk, particularly in the Windy City. For the third time in its history this blog has been mentioned in a Quick Takes column in the Chicago Sun Times.

We should also point out that in the coming weeks, faithful readers of this modest website can expect two book reviews: "The Last Nine Innings: Inside The Real Game Fans Never See" by Charles Euchner and "Love Me Hate Me: Barry Bonds And The Making of an Anti-Hero" by Jeff Pearlman. A representative from Sourcebooks, Inc., the publisher of the former, and Pearlman himself have generously offered to trade copies of their books for reviews on this website, and those will appear here within the next few days.

It's been making the rounds on the Internet for a bit now, and it's so ingenious that we decided to put a link to it here as well. It's a video of the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, but re-created on RBI Baseball, the old-school video game. Not sure if this was all done in one take by someone incredibly skilled at the game, or if it required painstaking re-starts, or if it was computer generated or what, but the result is quite ridiculously amazing.

We were expecting boos at Petco Park yesterday, but we did not expect a syringe to be thrown on the field, a marginally creative taunt that probably should earn some bitter San Diegan a night in the slammer.

A good start to the season for Barry, who laced the first pitch he saw into center field for a double and later scored on Lance Niekro's first hit of the year. But that was it. We missed the latter portion of the Giants' 6-1 loss due to the Florida-UCLA game and we're glad we did, not that the Gators' 16-point trouncing was any better.

A few things:

If it's Opening Night in the majors, don't put the game on the Deuce. Put it on ESPN, the Original. There are still cable companies in this country who do nopt offer ESPN2, if you can believe that.

Umpires are at it again, calling the phantom force-out at second. Guys: The fielder MUST touch the base in order to register the out, you idiots. How long do you have to be alive before you can understand this concept, and exactly what year will you start calling people safe when they are safe?

And the steroids issue popped up, of course. What would the grand Opening Day festivities of 2006 be like without it? Eric Karros, one of the three broadcasters on the Braves-Dodgers ESPN telecast, wondered aloud what the hell Major League Baseball is trying to accomplish with this ridiculous steroids investigation. They're dragging their own game into the mud even further, even though back in the McGwire-Sosa days, they cherished the fact that two musclebound sluggers were destroying Ruth's and Maris's marks and making everyone fall back in love with the game. Now they're going to pretend that something bad was going on, and worse, they're going to pretend to do: something about it? We already basically know that some guys were having needles stuck in their asses and whatnot; what more can they find out that will prove anything or shock anyone?

When the others, Dave O'Brien and Rick Sutcliffe, asked if Karros thinks steroids tarnished the game for several years, the other E.K. summed it up exactly the way we do, by saying, "I don't care." We didn't care when Mark McGwire was accused of taking steroids and admitted taking andostenedione, a legal substance, we didn't care when Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi, et al., each had their various horrible days in the spotlight, and we don't care now that Barry is the major target. We don't care. We just want to enjoy some baseball and have all the complainers shut up.

Last year we picked the Yankees and the...ummm...Marlins to go to the World Series. That's why you should never listen to us. This is pretty much for our benefit alone.

NATIONAL LEAGUE DIVISION CHAMPS:

AMERICAN LEAGUE DIVISION CHAMPS:

WILD CARDS:

NATIONAL LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP:

def.

AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP:

def.

2006 WORLD SERIES:

defeat

We will note that our pick of the Giants to win the weak N.L. West is not particularly predicated on a healthy return by Barry Bonds. The Giants have the best rotation in the division, and a full season of Randy Winn, who stunned everyone by hitting a boatload of homers in his two months with the team. And we are very anxious to see Matt Cain over a full season.

We're back to picking the Atlanta Braves to win the N.L. East. As long as we have this blog, the Braves will be the pick in this division every year until they finally finish somewhere other than first. We learned our lesson.

St. Louis is pretty much a lock to win the Central. They'll win 105 games this year. They're just way too loaded. And until the Astros show us that they are not solid, they're the pick for the wild card.

The defending world champion White Sox (a phrase it took over eight decades to return to the lexicon) should prevail in the A.L. Central. But we're picking Cleveland to be the wild card and advance to the ALCS instead of them, if only because anything can happen in a compact and quick five-game series. Hey, this ain't rocket science.

Toronto looks strong on paper, what with all their new acquisitions, but it just seems to trendy and right to be true. It's not often that a team with so many solid acquisitions over one off-season pulls it together and wins something. So we're simply going to go with the standby pick of the established New York Yankee Franchise.

The A.L. West is a real toss-up. Only Seattle doesn't have what it takes to win it. It will be a three-way dogfight all year. Stopping us from picking Texas is our pick of them last year. And repeating is difficult, so we're going with Oakland.

In the end, it's the Cardinals over the Yankees in the World Series. Then again, it could be the White Sox and Cubs. We don't know anything and we are very careful to let you know about that.