Be prepared to spend at least $200 to take
a family of four to a baseball game and pay for
a couple of beers and hot dogs.

There were a couple of games last week in Japan and a Sunday nighter in Washington, D.C., but for purists, today marks the opening of the Major League Baseball season.

And one thing is for certain.

Actually, two things.

"Baseball has never been more popular, or more expensive to watch," said Jon Greenberg, executive director of Team Marketing Research (TMR), a firm that monitors costs of professional sports teams, in a weekend press release.

Baseball’s ticket prices will jump an average of 10.1 percent this season. For a family outing, you better
pay a visit to the ATM machine beforehand or have a couple of credit cards handy once you arrive.

It will cost a family of four an average of $191.75 to go to a big-league ballgame, a total that includes two adult and two kids’ tickets at the average price, plus two beers, four soft drinks, four hot dogs, parking, two programs and two adult caps.

That total is referred to by TMR as the Fan Cost Index (FCI). Boston has the highest FCI at $320.71. Tampa Bay ($136.91) has the lowest.

St. Louis has the seventh-highest FCI of $217.28. Just look at it as your contribution to the contracts of
Chris Carpenter and Mark Mulder.

The Cubs are No. 2 at $259.84. Alfonso Soriano and Kosuke Fukudome appreciate your fanhood.

St. Louis has the highest-priced beer ($8.50) and soda $5) in the majors.

The Cubs have the second-lowest average beer ($5) and soda ($2.50) prices.

I know they had to give back their Grammy in 1990,
but I’ll still go watch a movie about Rob and Fab.

I am proud to this day to say I still love the music of Milli Vanilli.

So can you imagine my elation when I found out a movie about the disgraced duo is in the works at Universal Studios?

I know Rob and Fab did not sing their own music. I know they had to give back the Grammy they won in 1990 as Best New Artist.

I know, I know, I know, I know.

And I don’t care.

Personally, I think the boys were forced to suffer far more than they deserved. I don’t see Barry Bonds having to give back any of his home runs or Roger Clemens any of his pitching victories.

Rob and Fab were no more frauds than Bonds and Clemens appear to have been. Rob, Fab, Barry and The Rocket all put on a great show — with a little "help."

The Milli Vanilli movie will hardly be any sort of cheap trick. Jeff Nathanson, an American film writer,  producer and director, is one of the key figures in the project. He is best known for his work on the "Rush Hour" series and has co-written a story draft for the upcoming "Indiana Jones 4" film with George Lucas.

Both Fabrice Morvan and the estate of Rob Pilatus, who died in 1998 of a drugs overdose, have approved the project.

In a recent online report about the movie, Nathanson admitted to being "fascinated by the notion of fakes
and frauds, and in this case, you have guys who pulled off the ultimate con."

Nathanson describes Milli Vanilli, who sold 30 million singles and 11 million albums, as "the biggest laughing stocks of pop entertainment." Rob and Fab were stripped of their Grammy after it was revealed
that they hadn’t sung on any of their own recordings, including "Blame it on the Rain" and "Girl You Know
It’s True."

Outrage is growing over a program
that seems set on destroying marriages
and lives right before our very eyes.

Are you ready for a rumble?

All who want to join me are welcome. We are going after the Fox Network to take down that pitiful excuse for programming — "Moment of Truth." If ever a concept was spawned in the gutter, it is this tell-all tale of tripe.

A recent blog here about how worthless and totally disgusting that show is prompted a note from reader Sandi Terford of Quincy. She forwarded me an article about the growing outrage over the program that seems set on destroying marriages and lives right before our very eyes.

Actually, if the show’s ratings continue to head downward, we may not have to do much, but until the plug is finally pulled — oh, and it WILL be — I say we bombard the network with e-mails, letters and phone calls.

If you haven’t seen the show, the premise is to ask a contestant the most personal, revealing and embarrassing questions possible — with family and friends right there with him or her.

As the show builds, the questions become more far-reaching, but the chance to win a bigger cash prize is also being dangled. Adulterous revelations are more than welcome — and they score big bucks. So do illegal activities confessed to such as admitting to changing credit card receipts at work for a higher tip.

It’s a show that is extremely unnerving and difficult to watch. I’ve only seen about a half hour of it, and had to change the channel. I felt like I needed to take a shower.

Fox always likes to push the envelope with its adult-themed programming. I say it’s time to start pushing back a little. It’s hard to imagine this is the same network that gives us such wholesome family entertainment as "American Idol."

Are you with me? Then start complaining.

Go to the www.fox.com/community/askfox link for all the contact information you need.

1. Thou shalt not touch another man’s remote when in his house. A house is a man’s castle and he is king. The king controls the TV.

2. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wide screen high-def TV. It’s the same as former president Jimmy Carter lusting after women in his mind. In both cases, they’re not yours. End of wishful thinking.

3. Thou shalt always bring chips. If invited over to watch the NCAA tournament, always bring a minimum of two bags of snacks, preferably one bag of potato chips and one bag of Tostito-esque crunchies.

4. Thou shalt not sit in the king’s throne. The host always has first choice when it comes to seating arrangements.

5. Thou shalt not bring a cell phone into the viewing area unless your wife back home is pregnant. Any
interruption of the games by a ringing celly is grounds for expulsion.

6. Thou shalt keep quiet about thy brackets. No one wants to hear how many picks you got right. Be quiet and enjoy the games.

7. Thou shalt keep quiet, except for group yells and man cheers. No one cares about your personal problems, financial woes or work-related woes — except during commercials.

8. Thou shalt not bring wives, unless they are bona fide hoops junkies and can prove their fanhood.

9. Thou shalt wear gear. Support YOUR team. even if it is not in the tournament. Thou shalt not show up in the first round wearing a "DUKE" or "NORTH CAROLINA" T-shirt.

10. Thou shalt not bring an iPod. You are there to watch the games and engage in man customs, not be
preoccupied by the latest from 50 Cent.

It was a week ago today I revealed I was considering a diet.

"Not necessarily a diet, just eating better … making better choices," said Kelly Wilson, who serves as my life coach when not busy working as The Herald-Whig’s health writer.

"That’s a diet, Kel," I reminder her. "Are we dealing in semantics or pounds?"

I have been experimenting the past week, both in mode of attack and with food for thought, trying to decide what my plan of operation — if any — would actually be. Will I or won’t I? Do I have the needed willpower for such an undertaking?

Probably not and never were my two immediate answers, but at least I could console myself with the idea I was honest.

And a bit chubby.

I finally came to a compromise, something of a test run to see if I felt I had it in me to really get serious.

During the last seven days, I have drank more diet soda than the good stuff. A few hundred calories here, a few hundred calories there. They all add up. I figured for the past week I had saved myself 1,800 calories, which is probably akin to a needle in a haystack, but it was better than nothing.

This week I’m going to try and go 100 percent diet soda, plus cutting back on my nightly snacks.

This is a work in progress, friends. If we continue to move forward, it won’t be long until those morning sausage and egg biscuits will be a thing of the past.

(To be continued)

Every year at this time I am always reminded there are some people out there who do not live and die with their NCAA tournament brackets. And after almost 10 years of marriage to my wife, Kathy, I really should have learned by now that she is one of those.

But each year she amazes me at what she doesn’t understand about the world of sports and man laws. (Man law No. 8, if you remember, relates directly to the opening weekend of NCAA tourney play. A loose translation reads, "Thou shalt not put no other sports gods before the tournament.")

Saturday afternoon my lovely wife and I were seated at Elder’s, where the final minutes of West Virginia’s upset of Duke were on the restaurant’s television set. Everyone in the place — let me repeat, EVERYONE — was buzzing about West Virginia’s soon-to-be upset of the vaunted Blue Devils. As West Virginia coach Bob Huggins (a fellow Ohio native) said afterward, "The blue collar guys beat the bluebloods."

This was huge! Duke had fallen, and my ham steak dinner tasted just a little sweeter.

I looked across the booth at my preoccupied wife, who I think was counting sparrows or something outside the window, and said, "THIS is March Madness, Kath! THIS is March Madness!"

She turned to me and politely said, "March Madness? I thought that was a sale at the mall."

I felt like a James Bond martini. Shaken, but not stirred.

About that time, I remembered man law No. 31, which loosely translated is, "If a wife does not comprehend the importance of a major sporting event by the end of the 10th year of marriage, forget about it ever happening."

Our 10th anniversary is in October. I keep telling myself there is still time.

The closing of Irving School will be a painful experience,
but one that makes sense for the bottom line.

Earlier this week, I covered the question-and-answer meeting between Irving School parents and Quincy school officials. Three specific thoughts surfaced from that confab.

1. The closing makes sense. Granted, for parents and kids alike, this is a painful experience. The bond between families and school is arguably the strongest at the elementary-age level. But the bottom line is the bottom line, and this needed cost-cutting measure will be relatively easy to introduce. Most of the 169 students at Irving will be divided between Adams and Berrian schools — maybe not an ideal format for some parents, but one that is very workable.

2. The school district should have done a much better job in letting the general public know the closing of Irving was at least a possibility. The announcement that Irving would cease as an attendance center at the end of the school year was akin to a bomb being dropped on that neighborhood. Very few, if any, seemed to know it was a possibility.

3. Sharon Phillips, the principal at Irving, handled the situation with an incredible amount of class. I fully
believe she could write a manual on how to deal with adversity. The lady was amazing in her interaction with parents, students, citizens, school officials and media. She helped defuse what could have been The Perfect Storm.

New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is mobbed
by fans as he signs autographs at English Field
prior to the Yankees’ exhibition baseball game
against Virginia Tech Tuesday in Blacksburg, Va.

For as far back as I can remember, I always hated the New York Yankees.

That all changed earlier this week.

The Yankees played an exhibition game at Virginia Tech, their way of honoring the 32 students who were gunned down in April 2007 by a fellow student who later who later took his own life.

"This was the most important game of my Yankee career," said Alex Rodriguez, the three-time American League MVP.

Rodriguez spent most of the game sitting in the Virginia Tech dugout and talking with the Hokies’ players.

Yankees captain Derek Jeter signed a T-shirt for a Virginia Tech co-ed whose fiancee was one of those killed a year ago. Jeter had been the fiancee’s favorite player.

For the first time in my life, I realized even the New York Yankees had a heart.

Nikki Giovanni, a Virginia Tech professor, poet and activist, said this following the tragedy: "We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness. We will prevail."

For a few short hours, the Yankees helped that healing.

Senator Barack Obama with the Rev.
Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in a 2005 photo.
(Photo Courtesy of New York Times)

The inflammatory anti-American rhetoric from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was — and will always be — inexcusable, and whether or not it might cost Sen. Barack Obama the Democratic nomination remains to be seen.

There is simply no excuse for what he said, or even more so, how he said it. Wright’s tone was vicious. Until recently retiring, Wright had been the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ Church in Chicago since 1971 and under his leadership it had grown to an 8.500-member congregation. Obama has attended the church for 20 years.

Wright, an ex-Marine, helped pioneer numerous causes that benefitted Chicago as a whole and its black population in particular. Lost in all of that, however, has been a series of ongoing and controversial sermons going well back into his pastorate that are now being made public. Also coming out is information about his connection with some controversial political and world figures.

There’s no room here — or need — to exhibit what Wright has said in any of those controversial sermons over the years. There are copies aplenty on various Internet sites.

If the pastors for churches attended by Hillary Clinton or John McCain had offered similar thoughts from a white perspective, they would have been barbecued in their own pulpits — and rightly so.

What was especially irritating this week was a member of Wright’s church trying to rationalize what he said, feeling all of the "good things" he had done through the years should not be forgotten.

Well, they haven’t, and they shouldn’t be.

And neither will what he said when he condemned the country that allowed him to spew such venom.

I’ve got a serious decision to make this week. To start a diet or maintain the status quo?

My biggest problem in attacking this kind of project is I … umm … like to eat. I don’t necessarily eat a whole lot at one sitting, but it’s a consistent theme throughout most days. I prefer to look at it as "grazing."

I also don’t like to exercise. I once joined the YMCA and had Jamie Veach as my personal trainer. The harder I worked, the hungrier I got and the more I ate after each workout. I was forced to quit the YMCA because I was gaining more weight than I was losing.

The biggest roadblocks to a prolonged diet, which is what will take to get me back in game condition, is giving up so many things I like. It just doesn’t seem fair. I have a lot invested in this stomach that needs a 3XLT to harbor it.

In no particular order, I would miss most: pizza, ice cream (especially dipped cones and coconut crèam pie ice cream at Deters Frozen Custard), pastries, potato chips, Classic Coke with ice, whatever is on the menu at any fast food restaurant in town and the concession stand offerings at Quincy Raceways, which is scheduled to open later this month.

As I typed that last paragraph, my forehead broke out in a cold sweat.

This is going to be a tough decision.

(To be continued)