An Earful of Local Baseball News

A true major league baseball fan would have his or her ear against the Astroturf every day, listening for tiny vibrations, those advanced warnings of players hired, fired, retired or traded (the non-rhyming member of the transaction quartet). Naturally, nobody has conducted a long-term study on the effect of constant skin contact with Astroturf, which is why I keep my head far away from the stuff. I'm not going to risk an ear shriveling up, turning green, and falling off just to learn, five minutes before everybody else, that the Yankees traded Gary Sheffield to the Tigers. It's interesting news, but not worth an ear.

For fun, here is a list of five baseball tidbits, mostly related to local teams, that some true fan likely lost an ear over to report first:

1. The Oakland Athletics are moving to Fremont. I was ecstatic about the news until I learned the earliest the team would move to their new ballpark, Cisco Fields, would be in 2010.
2. Oakland's Frank Thomas will be playing in Toronto next year.
3. Oakland is interested in acquiring Barry Bonds. Can the A's convince him to play across the bay? And if so, does Bonds have enough left to linger another four years to play in Fremont? Does he even have enough left to put up Thomas-like numbers next season?
4. San Francisco's Moises Alou will play for the New York Mets next year.
5. Bill Mueller, who once played for the Giants and won a World Series ring with the Red Sox in 2004, retired and joined the Dodgers' front office.