Ah, to be rich and famous

I'm a baseball fan -- but not one of those guys in his forties carefully tracking all the active major leaguers as old as he is. Note: those guys are taking a hit now that Jesse Orosco is apparently retiring.

I'm also not one of those people who wishes he had made a career of baseball. I'm a fan, who is mostly satisfied by following the game in the paper, on-line, and on TV. Indeed, with the development of the web and daily game broadcasts, it is more fun than ever to be this kind of fan.

Fantasy baseball is also an amusing distraction when my team (KC) is bad, which occurs with great frequency.

In any case, I'm also not really jealous of country singer Garth Brooks, who will be attending Royals spring training.

But I do question why the guy needs to bat in exhibition games to promote his charity.

Apparently, he's helped raise $37 million for children from athletes over the past 5 years. Great.

But Brooks is 1 for 39 over the years and got his lone hit in 1998. He's 42 years old (six months younger than me) and few real major leaguers survive at that age. KC had a winning record last year and shouldn't need this kind of distraction. At bats need to go to young guys like David DeJesus.