Notes from a baseball geek’s best day of the year:

Several leftovers from baseball’s Opening Day. The Rays gave their opening day customers cow bells. If there is anything that captures 20 years of Rays baseball, it’s a cowbell. Both Joey Cora of the Bosox and Gabe Kapler of the Phils made rookie managerial errors in their debuts – pulling dominating pitchers early leading to comeback wins by the Rays and Braves respectively. We folks on the east coast don’t get the full picture of teams playing out west – like the fact that Felix Hernandez just pitched his tenth consecutive season opener. That’s stuff that only applies to names like Robin Roberts, Tom Seaver and Walter Johnson. It’s another season, another stint on the DL for Troy Tulowitzki. If the guy could have stayed on the field, he might have been headed for the Hall. Also, now that Peter Gammons has semi-retired, there probably is not a better baseball writer in the country than MLB’s Richard Justice who spent years covering both the Rangers and Astros.

Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. Happy Easter – and April Fools Day. This is only the first or second time this has happened since many of us were born – 1956 was the last time.

2. Quote of the week: Sheriff Grady Judd at a recent Polk County commission meeting responding to a question: “I’m not here to discuss politics”. Who is he kidding? Sheriff Judd is the biggest politician in Polk County if not all of central Florida.

3. There’s an election in New Port Richey next week with a healthy field of seven candidates to fill two vacated council seats. Most cities have trouble pulling together a field – to see seven candidates in New Port Richey is refreshing.

4. Peter Stamas, who with his brother Nick founded the iconic Stamas Boat Company, passed away in Tarpon Springs last week at age 94.

5. Florida’s most recent unemployment rate was 3.9 per cent – lower than the national average of 4.1. Among the highest, somewhat surprisingly, are Alaska at 7.3 per cent and D.C. at 5.7.

Sports, the media and other stuff:

6. Baseball lost one of its finest last week with the passing of “La Grand Orange” as Rusty Staub was known in his Montreal playing days. Good as his on-field efforts were, they were overshadowed by his charitable works both during and after his playing days. Staub was 73.

7. Guess we’re one of the few who feel FSU coach Leonard Hamilton owes no one an apology for his reaction to CBS reporter Dana Jacobsen’s repetition of the same question over and over. It became not an interview but a clear case of badgering. Jacobson aside, the NCAA deserves a lot better than some of the hacks CBS ran out there this year.

8. Forty-five years ago this week (1973), Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly With His Song was the Number 1 hit in the country and would be the biggest hit of the year – the second year in a row this happened for Roberta following The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face in 1972. The only other artist to have the biggest record two years in a row, as you might expect, was Elvis with Don’t Be Cruel (’56) and All Shook Up (’57).

9. Yet another baseball note: best hire of the offseason was not Jake Arietta, Yu Darvish or J.D. Martinez, but the White Sox re-hiring of Nevest Coleman, a former groundskeeper, who spent 23 years in prison falsely accused of murder.

10. As promised, the first of our week by week look at each baseball franchise’s greatest players and pitchers in the past 75 years (back story – TBRR 3/25). We lead off with the Angels and our best player goes to a still active Angel – Mike Trout. It is only a matter of five years after he hangs ‘em up when Trout is a first ballot Hall of Famer. Best pitcher – he could qualify as several teams best pitcher, but it was with the Angels that Nolan Ryan really broke out to a Hall of Fame career. Next week – the Astros best two.

Some modern day Don Quixotes

She was once the face of America – a glamorous, well-engineered beauty of the seas – the fastest ocean liner ever. Today, sadly, she sits in the Delaware River, in a full view of the highway – pretty much a rusting hulk – the SS United States. Built in 1952, designed by acclaimed naval architect William Francis Gibbs, she ruled the seas in the 50s and 60s. By the end of the sixties, the airplane had pretty much eclipsed trans-Atlantic voyages. The United States and her foreign competition, the Queens and the SS France were retired. Many attempts have been made to turn her into a more modern cruise type ship, a floating hotel – and now a museum. Unfortunately, the cost of doing any of those is more than it would cost to build a replica. There is a SS United States Conservancy, headed by the designer’s granddaughter Susan Gibbs, that raises money to keep the grand old lady from the scrap heap. But they face daunting odds - $60,000 a month just to dock it and hold off further damage from Mother Nature. We’ve seen the vessel and it’s a sad sight. We wish them well as they tilt at windmills.

NEXT UP: Fire Department issues; historic baseball games; the Astro’s best