All baseball fans will want to check out this new site called the Hardball Times; it's one hundred percent better than every other source of baseball information out there, barring Rob Neyer's column and his and Rany Jayazerli's blog. Rob and Rany are just two guys, though; at the Hardball Times they have like twelve, all young writers and/or bloggers who know their stuff cold.

Matthew Namee, who is Bill James's research assistant, is one of the writers, but the one I like best is Aaron Gleeman. He's a college kid up at Minnesota and he's the best writer of the bunch, with a personal style that's inimitable. He doesn't take things too seriously, but you can tell he both loves and knows baseball. His blog is linked over there on the left, but I'll bet he doesn't keep it going. Seriously, Aaron, if you read this, I'd put the blog on hiatus and focus on the Hardball Times, where you're going to get a lot more readers.

Check out his play-by-play of the Opening Day game in Japan. It's dead-on and it's also hilarious. In this episode Aaron has some fun with Harold Reynolds, the none-too-bright ESPN announcer who's third man in the booth.

Harold Reynolds just said he thinks "the ball jumps more" in a domed stadium when it is full with people. Someone should study this, if they haven't already. It would seem to be fairly easy to do, and I'm about 99% sure Reynolds is just talking out of his ass, like he usually is.

...Crawford hits a high pop up to Jeter, who catches the ball, stumbles, and then falls right on his ass. Reynolds giggles like a school-girl and then, wouldn't you know it, gives Jeter credit for "not taking his eye off the ball."

...Reynolds: "That's the advantage of having a guy with the range of a shortstop at third base." As opposed to what they're used to, a guy with the range of a potted plant playing shortstop.

Baldelli grounds out to the potted plant for the third out.

...Reynolds said ARod has gained weight and, in his opinion, couldn't even play shortstop now. Right. ARod could suddenly have an obese Siamese twin surgically attached to him and I'd play him there over Jeter.

...Reynolds: "This whole steroid thing has been blown so far out of proportion."

Sheffield walks, putting men on 1st and 2nd. Ravech: "How can you say now it is blown out of proportion?"

Reynolds: "It was only five percent of the players. You can go anywhere in America to a health club to make yourself bigger, stronger, faster."

Reason #5,301,495 why I don't pay attention to any of this steroids stuff.