If You Choose to Sleep, You Could Lose Your Teeth

Good god, did you see the papers yesterday? It was a wasteland. Murray Chass mumbling about the World Series, Rutgers-UConn football, front pages about newspaper circulation.

Without baseball, it's going to be a media wasteland for a while, folks. But not to worry – we here at Y2K have gone all Madame Sosostris and picked out the top 10 stories that you're going to want to follow over the upcoming months.

Dig.

Prospects still playing

The go-to source at this point for your Arizona Fall League (and Hawaiian Winter League) fix has to be the Daily News' Adam Rubin, out in the desert watching Mike Pelfrey and Co. play.

Rubin gave us audio of the big stud from Saturday following a scoreless outing, as well as updates on Brandon Nall, Kevin Mulvey and the rest of the gang. Humber has already been pulled with tendinitis in his shoulder, so we won't hear much about him for a while. This is something worth checking in on.

Out in the middle of the ocean, the Hawaiian league restarted after nine years off. It's an MLB-Asian leagues hybrid, on a 60/40 split favoring our guys. 20-year-old 1B Mike Carp, playing for the North Shore Honu, is the only guy worth bothering about. (Say what up to Frankie and Gabriel while you're out there, Carpie).

Konichiwa means hello

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much are the Japanese going to love Jose Reyes? 50? He, Wright, and the Maine Event will play with the MLB All-Stars against our SEATO allies starting Thursday, while Manny Acta and Julio Franco are going as coaches. That's humiliating, Julio.

In the abstract, I love this tour. It makes everyone a lot of money, it makes it more likely that top-drawer Japanese players will be exposed to MLB scouts and come over here to play, it gives Bronson Arroyo a whole new audience for his music. Win-win-win.

But as much as I adore the notion of Jose-Jose-Jose being famous in Japan, I'm scared stiff that one of these guys is going to get hurt. Reyes goes down on the Tokyo Dome turf, I will fucking flip my shit. And if you think it's above Hiroyuki Kobayashi to throw a beanball in the ninth inning of a blowout ... well you, my friend, don't know what I know. Be prepared.

From across the pond comes ...

The English Premiership. One of the best soccer leagues in the world. Top players. My favorite squad, the Arsenal.

But it's all in jeopardy, according to ESPN's Soccernet: "Internet porn a growing problem for players." See, this is the kind of story the damn liberal media over here never reports.

Konichiwa means hello

Back to Japan. Everything points to Daisuka Matsuzaka, the man without a gyroball but with every other pitch in the book and a rubber arm to boot, being a stud. Here's Bobby V. , who knows a thing or two about Japanese ball:

He is very special," Valentine said from Japan via e-mail. "He has a good fastball that he throws from 90 mph to 95. He has very good control and can throw any one of three other pitches over for a strike any time in the count.

The best comp is clearly Hideo Nomo's rookie year, Nomo's Age-26 season from 1995: ROY, 13-8, 2.54 ERA, 236K in 193 innings. For the record, that was the best strikeout rate in the league, and the second-lowest ERA behind Greg Maddux's 19-2/1.63 ERA year.

The guy's a game-changer. Look out below.

Iron Sheff America

This is notable because A) Sheffield is a selfish maniac, and that's good TV, and B) the Mets are among the best fits under an option-trade scenario.

I clearly don't think it's going to happen. But I don't know where he's going to go. The Cubs probably want to keep Aramis more than they want Sheff, and Jacque Jones had a flukishly good enough year. If the Phillies deal with the Yankees again, the fans might burn Pat Gillick alive.

The Dodgers have J.D. Drew, the Astros are skinflints ... maybe he goes to the Giants, but does Sheff want to go anywhere near the San Francisco Chronicle and the BALCO morass? Here's a headline for you -- “Slugger kills recently freed Chron reporters in tunnel.” I'm thinking if he goes, it's to the Mariners for one of their middle infield prospects.

All I know is it's worth keeping tabs on, in the unlikely and horrid case that we have to deal with this sociopath next spring.

Sabre time

Ladies and gentlemen, the coolest show on ice. The Buffalo Sabres just barely missed setting a new NHL record for consecutive victories to start a season Saturday, going down 5-4 to Atlanta in a shootout. They were down by a goal four times. They came back each time.

They play hockey like it's played in heaven – skating with the wind, looking for the ridiculous pass, constantly attacking the net, embarrassing grown men. Even if you're not a huge hockey fan, it's a compelling thing to watch domination in action.

Plus, their stud young wing's a bit of a Baldwin. Ladies, don't say Y2K never did nothing for you.

Dementia ... of some kind

It is apparently completely cool to shit all over people with Parkinson's Disease. I did not know that. Also, Matt Lauer will be dealt with. Developing.

Chicken Tika Barber

The only negative on this list, as in don't pay attention to any of this nonsense about Tiki Barber leaving. The “distraction” stuff is writers looking for something to write about. He's going to go be a star, he's the next Frank Gifford, and that's that. Let it go.

But far more importantly, anyone who doesn't want to see Big Brandon Jacobs hit the hole like 200 times next year is either a knave or a fool. Brandon Jacobs will outlast us all. He's like a A1M1 tank in grey tights.

Belichick son arrested for pot

Look, we all hate the New England Patriots here. We hate their success, we hate Tom Brady's inhumanly strong jawline, we hate Rodney Harrison for about a thousand reasons. But most of all, we hate the amoral, dehumanizing football fascist that is Bill Belichick. (Refusing to say anything nice about Adam Vinatieri after he departed remains one of the most stunningly mean-spirited things I've ever seen.)

Anyway, bonus points to the first reporter who asks Belichick if he's going to release his son from the roster after getting arrested. He's a liability, Bill! Use your head, not your heart!

Cuban libre

Speaking of facism, David Stern is going after Mark Cuban hard again. I happen to like Cuban's style. I like people who say what they think. The guy's got a blog ... how bad can he be?

Bad enough that the NBA is apparently going to prevent him from sitting on the bench with his team during games. It was half-cute, half-pathetic -- Cuban in his Mavs baseball or rugby jersey, screaming about calls, telling bad jokes to Jerry Stackhouse, pretending he was one of the guys.

Whatever. He's the billionaire. If that's the way he wants to spend his money, so be it.

Well, the other owners are going to spitefully cut him at the knees. Cuban's already fired back once. It's not inconceivable that he could bring a gun to the next league meeting.

That's it for now. Look for a special Y2K interview coming up later in the week.