A few thoughts...

- Pete Rose is making headlines again, and not in a good way. It turns out the Hit King inscribed around 30 baseballs with "I'm sorry I bet on baseball." The balls were given to a collector, who promised not to sell them. Well, the collector passed away and his family, not feeling they were bound by the promise, is going to auction off the balls next year.

Rose, obviously upset that he's not getting a piece of the action, is now offering similarly signed baseballs for $300 - $350 if you want it personalized!

This all makes me ill. If Rose was really sorry, he'd be offering the balls at cost or giving them away. This is just another cynical attempt by Rose to cash in on this whole sad story. The guy waited 15 years before finally coming clean, and now he's making money off his so-called apology. He can sit outside the Hall of Fame forever as far as I'm concerned. Even better, put him in after he's dead, so he can't make any more money from his induction.

- I watched the first of the "new" Star Trek episodes the other night. For those who don't know, CBS/Paramount has remastered the show in HD and upgraded the special effects with new CGI shots. Apparently, the 1960's vintage effects, which don't look so great in standard definition, looked really grainy in HD.

The first episode was Balance of Terror, one of Trek's best and a good candidate for remastering, as it featured a space battle with a Romulan Bird of Prey. I know that there was a lot of talk on StarTrek.com about being respectful to the original effects, but in my opinion they went a little too far.

I might be the only person in Star Trek fandom who thinks this, but if you have the technology available to upgrade the FX, then really upgrade them! Essentially, the shots in the original show were just recreated with CGI. How about showing us something new? Show the Romulan plasma weapon chasing the Enterprise from the outside, not just as a red blob in the viewscreen. Give us a shot of what it looks like to have a nuclear weapon detonate 100 meters off the ship's deflectors.

Star Trek has never been about special effects, but if you are going to go to the time and effort to do all the effects shots in the Original Series again, why not do something really exciting?

- Finally, congratulations to David Ortiz, for breaking Jimmie Foxx's 68 year old Red Sox single season home run record. Congratulations, Big Papi!!!