A quiet fool can go undiscovered for a long time
—"Roger" Mason Cooley

War begets quiet, quiet idleness… —Sir Walter "Alston" Raleigh

It's a slow news day, news week, and even news month, if you count February, which just ended with Barry Bonds, arguably the best player of the last seventy years, appearing in drag on the front page of most of the major baseball sites.

Aside from debating the merits of Bret Boone's Hall of Fame chances or enumerating all the players backing out of the World Baseball "Classic", which henceforth will appear only accompanied by the pretentious quotes, there aint much going on here.

While I complete my General Manager study (I have just about every one all-time and will finalize the rest soon) and regretfully ignore my site, my baseball jones the last few days has been slaked with the amusing attempts by MLB.com to positively spin the WB"C" defections. Witness, "Citing family tragedy, Guerrero out of Classic". " Leiter, Majewski added to Team USA" (Of course, replacing two major pitchers gone AWOL, Billy Wagner and C.C. Sabathia).

Unlike March, which starts today (set your calendars accordingly), this baseball season goes in like a lamb but comes out a lion.

The Marlins and Nationals have already hung "Contract Me" targets on their backs. Both teams are clamoring for a new, more favorable stadium deal. In the last collective bargaining agreement, of course, the owners acquired the rights to contract without the players union's say-so. Thanks Donald Fehr, bye bye Expo-Nats and Marlins. Of course, the contraction threat might just be empty posturing to secure the deals in question, but hey, that doesn't mean it won't happen. And the Marlins are down to "Cabrera and Willis and hope the rest don't kill us".

And there's the CBA itself, which runs out at the end of the year but has barely caused a ripple this languorous offseason. I think I read one mention of a meeting by both parties on a new CBA. I expect that to change dramatically fairly soon.

And lastly, there's hardly a mention of last season's bugbear, steroids. Meanwhile players who are tainted by steroids, or at least perceived as so, are quietly disappearing into the sunset. Rafael Palmeiro. Sammy Sosa. And now Bret Boone. They will be spending plenty of time with Luca Brasi and Adrianna from "The Sopranos" this season.

It's quiet out there.

But like Billy Ray Valentine in "Trading Places", I can smell that there's something afoot. (Or as Valentine put it, "They're panicking out there. It's Christmas and they're afraid they can't get their kids the G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu grip and that their wives won't make love to 'em anymore. They're panicking. I can smell it")

I have the feeling that every parent gets when his kids are too quiet. "It's quiet…too quiet! They're up to something!"

Or maybe it was a slow news day and Mr. Eko cutting his beard off and giving it to one of the "Others" on Lost got my conspiracy mojo rising. What the frig was that about anyway? Was it a possible reference to the newly minted, non-caveman edition of Johnny Damon, New York Yankee—how weird is that to say?