Baseball news has been pretty quiet the last few days. 208 players have already filed for free agency including Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte of the Yankees. Clemens, of course, has said he is retiring. But if he changes his mind, he will have the right to talk to any team.

Andy Pettitte has said that he can't imagine pitching for any other team and who can blame him. He was drafted by the Yankees and has pitched for them since the 1995 season. His record of success is remarkable judging from his record as it's one of the best in winning percentage history. Add that to his post season success and he seems like a must sign for the Yankees.

The Mets did score a very good victory in landing Oakland A's pitching coach Rick Peterson. Peterson has developed the A's remarkable pitching story and his philosophy is used through the A's farm teams. The Mets were always famous for their development of pitching talent but that has not been the case in recent history. There hasn't been a Doc Gooden, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman or Nolan Ryan come out of their farm system in a long time.

Peterson will upgrade the entire Mets' system and the addition of Bill Singer to the Mets front office to find the talent to develop means that the Mets are doing all the right things to rebuild that franchise. But Bobby Valentine will be in Japan. Alas!

I have to wonder what will become of the Athletic's pitching with Peterson's departure. Will their big pitchers continue to develop without him? Will they continue to keep coming up with great arms from the minor leagues. Look what Peterson did for Ted Lilly in his first full year with the team. Lilly went 12-10 in his first full season and had a perfect ERA in the playoffs (0.00).


In the "I've-got-to-see-this" category, the San Diego Padres announced that they will have new uniforms this coming season. What a victory for that team! That's even better news than having a new stadium. The Padres have consistently had the worst looking uniforms in baseball. They went from those awful brown and yellow uniforms in the 80's to equally ugly blue uniforms in the 90's.

Have you ever seen pictures of Dave Winfield in those old Padres' uniforms. Yeesh! No wonder he wanted to get out of there. Speaking of Winfield, I remember watching him while he was with the Yankees. No one consistently hit the ball harder than Winfield. Infielders used to play in the short outfield when he came up. Anyway, he had this way of wiggling his butt when he was waiting for the pitch. That used to drive the women crazy. It didn't do much for me but I can imagine what they were looking at.

There wasn't a picture in the news reports about the uniforms but they were described as a tri-color pattern of sand, navy and sky blue. Hmm...sounds like an improvement.