…and this is the Final Four you give me?  While I was down South America way (Florida, hey it’s south and it’s America) for a week the sports world went a little nutty, didn’t it?

George Mason managed to beat Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and UConn in a little over a week and made the Final Four.

Florida advanced to the Final Four led mostly by a seven foot French girl.

Padres starter Jake Peavy told Peter Gammons that he’s now smearing Icy Hot on his nuts before he pitches because Roger Clemens does it.  (I assume Jake meant that Roger rubs Icy Hot on his own nuts and now Jake is rubbing it on his own, but with Roger, you never know.)

The Cubs threw 9 2/3 hitless innings in a spring training game.

Gonzaga forward JP Bautista is still standing on the court holding his arms over his head waiting to be fouled.

Illinois lost to Washington for two reasons.  1) Dee Brown couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat–which was a trend in every one of the Illini’s 2006 losses, and 2) the game was officiated as though Washington couldn’t commit a foul and Illinois couldn’t miss.

Ironically, Washington lost to UConn in the next round because of a horrible, needless, foul by their freaky looking white guy with the white hair (looks like a long lost Busey brother), and the fact that the game was officiated as though Connecticut couldn’t commit a foul and Washington couldn’t miss.

I was in Florida for a week.  Saw four Disney theme parks, the Kennedy Space Center, Cocoa Beach, and an Indian guy piss his pants at Midway Airport.  I rode on a Mt. Everest themed roller coaster with Martina McBride, nearly passed out on something called Mission:Space (which, by the way is awesome), I managed to have not just a penny but also a dime fall out of my shorts pocket as I was getting out of the car at a Nike outlet store, and those eleven cents managed to lodge themselves perfectly into the seatbelt connector of my rented Pontiac G6.  I drove back to my parents’ house, unable to buckle the seatbelt because there were 11 cents keeping it from actually…buckling?  Is that a word.

On the way back to the house, I told my girlfriend that a few years ago, my brother and I went to that same Nike Outlet store and when we got back, realized mom and dad had left and locked up the house and neither one of us had a key.  We ended up sitting out by the pool drinking beer and waiting for them to come home.  Hee hee.  Good times.

We pulled up in front of the house, no mom or dad, and I had forgotten my key…again.  So she’s out by the pool and I’m laying half in and half out of my overpriced Pontiac trying to pry the eleven cents out of it.  After a lot of swearing, finally I got them both out.

Knowing that mom and dad were out for the evening, we made some plans to go out to eat, hit my favorite dive-bar/English Pub and see a movie.  Hah!  Who needs to get into the house?  Not us.  We still had some time to kill, so I took my wallet and keys out of my shorts, tossed aside my shirt and went to hop in the ludicrously large floaty thing I’d been lying in all week.  That was of course the only time all week that I fell out of it.

Tremendous.  Bravo.  As Alan Shepard famously said.  “I’m a wet bag now.”

Is there a moral to this story?  Yes.  Do not go to the Nike Outlet Store on Highway 192 in Orlando.  Go to the one in the Vineland Mall.  The one on 192 is officially haunted.

So anyway, here we are.  It’s March 27.  Baseball season is now less than a week away.  Desipio has been, to be kind, inconsistently updated for months now.  The only thing daily about the Daily Dose has been the e-mails I get complaining that there hasn’t been a new one in several days.

Well, your long, pained wait is over.  Baseball season, as fruitless as it might be for Cubs fans is here, and it’s time to get back to the grind.  It all starts with a Cubs-Sox GameCast today at 2 p.m. (they’re on Comcast Sports Net today–with, I’m sure, Hawk and DJ.  Blecch.).  Coming this week, we’ll have our award-winning team-by-team capsule previews with comments on each team from our expert scouts.  (Most of whom are drunk most of the time.)  Next week we’ll have not one, not two, but three Cubs’ GameCasts to kick off the season.  Both games in Cincinnati and the Friday opener at Wrigley against the Cardinals.  Oh boy, is this great!

While I was gone, I see that the Bears signed Brian Griese to hold a clipboard and wait for the familiar sound of something on Rex Grossman going “snap.”  Let’s just hope that Brian doesn’t fall down his driveway again.

Did anybody else see this thing about how Jim Edmonds’ arm keeps going numb?  This is what happens when you insist not only on giving yourself a “sleeper” but unnecessarily giving them to teammates, too.

You know the Cubs’ pitching is a mess when John Koronka seems likely to make the team.  Guh.

E-ramis isn’t likely to hit .600 this season.  Really?  The Cubs are talking to the A’s about Freddie Bynum.  Hey, whatever it takes to make Dusty realize he doesn’t need 12 pitchers on his staff in April.  Also, the great Les Walrond has been sent to minor league camp.

The Bulls are thinking playoffs after beating the great Celtics yesterday in Boston.  They do realize the Celtics are bad, though?  Right?

The Osprey Killer might make the team, and Mike Wuertz’s implosion continues.

The Cubs have put the pitching future of Mark Prior in the hands of a doctor who couldn’t figure out how to get on a plane.  Nice.

The Wizard of Roz with a piece on how Mark Grace wants to kiss and make up.  Screw him.  I watched some of the Cubs-D’backs game yesterday on Fox Sports Southwest with the obnoxious duo of Grace and tHom Brennaman.  I had to endure tHom bloviating about “It’s amazing how FAR these Cubs have FALLEN since being FOUR outs away from a World Series.”  First of all, it was five.  So hah!  but more to the point, the Cubs only won 88 games that year, they won 89 the next year and last year finished a whopping two games under .500.  They have fallen from above average to mediocre.  It’s not like the D’Backs who tHom sees every day who went from a World Championship to 111 losses in three years.

Actually, tHom’s right, the Cubs have fallen pretty hard, but only he could put it in such a way that I’d feel compelled to defend them.

As for Grace, he’s a babbling idiot in the booth, and when John Mabry came to bat in the ninth wearing his number 17, tHom went on a rant about how the Cubs need to retire Grace’s number.  This, of course, is ludicrous.  Grace was a good player, but never a great one.  The Cubs have only retired the numbers of Hall of Famers Billy Williams, Ernie Banks and Ryne Sandberg and should-be Hall of Famer/Cubs Mascot Ron Santo.  They’ll probably retire 31 some day in homage to two Hall of Famers who wore it, Fergie Jenkins and Greg Maddux, but for now, that should be it.  Do they really need to retire Grace’s number?  He made one more All-Star appearance than Shawon Dunston for chrissakes.  Now if they retired the numbers of guys who set records for Winstons smoked during games and most bar skanks nailed, then by all means, Grace is an easy choice.  Otherwise you’re just opening the door for every Cub who failed to ever hit 20 homers or drive in 100 runs in a season.

Gene Wojckjoijokjlkdski on the wild ride of George Mason.  This is truly the feel-good story of the college season, hands down.

Dickie V says George Mason is the biggest Cinderella, ever.  I disagree that it’s bigger than the US over the USSR in hockey in 1980 for one nitpicky reason.  That win had social significance that even to this day can’t be overexaggerated.  This one was fun, but the biggest thing you could say about it was, “F#$% you, Billy Packer!” That’s just not enough.  As for the team they beat to get to the Final Four.  What a mess this bunch is.  Easily the most talented team in the country, Connecticut played lousy in the Big East Tournament and then in the NCAAs.  You know a team is loathesome when you pick them to win the tournament (like I did) and yet find yourself rooting loudly against them in each of their tournament contests.  Good riddance.  And when you look around the Final Four, as incredible as it may seem…George Mason might just win this thing.

Kelly Dwyer wants people to fear his Nuggets.  Huh?

Kevin Kaduk’s book Wrigleyworld will be released tomorrow.  At some point, this will get its own column, and not just because he interviewed me for the book and they slapped a comment from me on it.  In a nutshell, Kevin quit his job writing for the Kansas City Star and spent last season living in Wrigleyville, scalping tickets to nearly every Cubs’ game.  He took a road trip to New York to see Will Ohman crap his pants against Hideki Matt Suhey, he went to Ryne Sandberg’s Hall induction and mainly he got drunk a lot.  Now that’s something we can all get behind.  Like I said, I’ll give it the full review treatment in the next week or two (because I got a spiffy “review” copy back in the winter–see how important I am?).

Since we’re all literary for some reason today…on the plane to Florida I read Sam Walker’s “Fantasyland” and it is tremendous.  Not just for the painfully funny opening scene with Jock Jones, but for all of it.  I know all about Tout Wars, from my days writing for both Rotoball.com, Rotonews.com and Rotowire.com.  I used to work for Jeff Erickson, and I can vouch that he’s a nice person.  And I hardly hold a grudge that Rotonews still owes me several thousand dollars…

I’m sure by now that you’ve seen this.  But Deadspin has a very enjoyable (well, not for some of you) video of Iowa fans watching as Northwestern State pulls the first round upset right out of their hineys.

Today there’s a link to George Mason fans celebrating at the game after winning a spot in the Final Four.  We know how great it was to get Illinois there last year, but this is huge.  This is like NIU going to the Final Four.  And if you don’t think some mid-major coaches are crapping their pants at the thought of their fans EXPECTING them now to pull a George Mason…well, you’d be wrong.

The Phillies are gearing promotions to college students.  Sweet.  And don’t get me started on how great it is to have “Phillies Ball Girls.”

Gee, the Nats are upset with Alfonso Soriano because of his work ethic.  Hmm.  What a shock.  The one spring training game I went to, was Nats-Braves and while Soriano hit a three run homer, and Jeff Francoeur nearly killed Livan Hernandez with a line drive, the best part of the game was watching Livan pitch.  I don’t think he ever threw two pitches the same speed.  He’s got this easy motion that would make Kerry Wood convulse if he saw it and it looks like he should be getting rocked…but he’s not.  That fat dude will pitch until he’s 50.  Actually, he’s from Cuba so he might already be 50.

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