Leave it to Major League Baseball’s old and tired leadership to open half of the league’s games in cold climates, many of which will force postponements during the very first week of the season. While the proud and downtrodden denizens of Philadelphia should be have been celebrating the first professional sports crown in the city of brotherly love for decades, they instead found some of their press stolen because of a cancellation of the season opener between the White Sox and Royals a day before the game was scheduled to be played!

That’s right folks,  it’s baseball season, and it’s snowing in Chicago.

It’s ludicrous that a professional sports league that employs as many marketing consultants as locker room attendees could sign off on a plan designed to wreak havoc on the schedule year after year.

There’s a simple solution to avoid the annual cancellations, travel headaches and  furious dispossesed fan bases: Play the entire first two weeks of the season in markets that are either: A) on the West coast, B) below the Mason-Dixon line or C) have domed stadiums. Stop kowtowing to the need for a New York opener and season-starting series in places like Cleveland and Chicago, and the season might actually work the way it’s supposed to on paper.

Of course, there’s never any weather-related problems in basketball, but there are plenty of crowd issues when the basketball is being played by women. If you tuned into the NCAA Women’s Final Four last night, ESPN would like to hear from you (they don’t believe the Nielsen ratings could possibly be that low) and Courtney Paris would like to apologize for crying so much the tears started flowing out of your screen.

Put those two stories together — the blown, $64,000 guarantee by a Joe Namath-sounding women’s basketball player and an utter lack of attendance (at least heading into the Final Four; no overnight attendance numbers were available last night) — and add in undefeated UConn’s seemingly inevitable drive to a perfect season, and there are plenty of fascinating story lines in St. Louis. Yet the bottom line, as it so often is with women’s basketball, no one cares.

That’s a shame. After all, when’s the next time an NFL great will have twin daughters playing in a Final Four, one of whom has an impulsively gregarious moment that costs him $64,000? When’s the next time we’re going to get to see that face? Priceless folks, priceless.

Somehow, despite the odds and ethical questions, a 19-year-old jockey is on the verge of competing in his horse racing’s signature event. If that doesn’t seem stunning enough, this is: Joe Talamo has already earned some $4 million en route to spitting range of his ultimate goal: the Kentucky Derby.

What’s even more amazing about Talomo, as first exposed by LAIST, are hisTwitter updates. For instance, check out these recent inputs from the rider of derby contender “I Want Revenge”.

• “30 til derby: Am at Santa Anita. Worked out 3 horses this morning…Right Round by Flo Rida is my song of the day. Big month ahead,”
• “30 til derby: just got home from dinner at the ivy and tim’s show. great night! going to bed. gotta wake up early”
• “29 til derby: Working a couple more horses after the break. Then filming a scene at Clocker’s Corner for Jockeys. LA Times interview at 10.”

Hmmm, tough life you got there kid. Now, about that L.A. TIMES interview. Would you prefer a Bill Plaschke kiss up, or a clueless T.J. Simers job? Your choice.

• About that Philadelphia World Series celebration; ummm, someone forgot to tell the Braves to roll over, even with a prior winless-in-openers Derek Lowe on the mound.
• Sidney Crosby is still getting upstaged by Alex Ovechkin in the box scores, but he’s starting to make up ground on him in on-ice fights.

• If anyone needed another reason to believe that Oakland’s entry into the National Football League is an ongoing script for a future WB sitcom, there’s this entry calling for the team to consider acquiring Michael Vick.
• Forget NASCAR, the real auto racing news is in the IRL, where Danica Patrick crashed … and then went off on a rookie driver.

• Roy Williams is already setting the groundwork for an excuse if someone gets hurt and it costs his team the national title. Has he already forgotten that his Tar Heels housed this Michigan State team on the same floor a few months ago?
• Dustin Pedroia: Alex Rodriguez is a dork.
• This has to qualify as one of the stranger endings to a UFC fight in memory.

• Could unfrozen zamboni ice be the strangest free hand out in minor league hockey history? We’re going to say yes, yes it can.
• Her name is Destinee Hooker. His name is Clifton Gay. Of course they had to get married.

• Only in Italy: World famous soccer manager Jose Mourinho gets a lap dance on national TV …
  … and finds a way to appear completely uninterested. As if.