Catching Up ...

• Jimmy Dugan famously professed, "There's no crying in baseball!" But, like many institutions with time-honored traditions, baseball must make room for progress and pioneer crybabies such as Mark McGwire, Jim Joyce and Carlos Zambrano. Oh, how times have changed, Jimmy.


• That Ubaldo Jimenez dude has one of those faces -- he looks like someone famous, but I can't quite put my finger on who. Then again, it doesn't really matter. The kid is doing quite well in establishing his own celebrity. Now he just needs a cool nickname.


• People are starting to get excited about the Rangers and Padres, two teams that started hot but weren't expected to keep it up this deep into the season. We're almost at the All-Star break, and neither club shows any sign of faltering. But, c'mon, it's the Rangers and Padres. We all know how it's going to turn out, don't we?


• Maybe Ken Griffey Jr. made the right call when he decided to retire. But walking away in the middle of the season? Why not stick around -- for the club, for the fans, for the game? Kinda like when his dad stuck around one more year for him.