(AP/Getty/BLS illustration)

Rejoice, rejoice, the baseball season is almost here! In an attempt to quickly get some of you slackers up to speed on the year ahead, Big League Stewards Kevin Kaduk and David Brown will again look at a division, hold a conversation about the issues therein and then issues some predictions on expected standings and award-winners. Up next is the NL Central.

David Brown: We heart Middle America so much, Kev, that we stayed an extra day to talk about the biggest division in the major leagues. It's got six teams (for the moment) and stretches all the way from Pennsylvania to Texas. It's much more competitive than the "other" Central Division, too. I'm talking about the NL Central, which happens to contain the reigning World Series champions, the St. Louis Cardinals.

[ Related: Video: AL playoff predictions | NL forecast ]

I'm not sure which I've seen more: Stories about how there's no way the Cardinals can be as good without Albert Pujols, or stories about how they'll win anyway despite his departure to the Angels via free agency. But they'll also have to win without skipper Tony La Russa, who is semi-retired now, and pitching guru to the stars Dave Duncan. Does new manager Mike Matheny even know how to change pitchers once, much less four times in an inning like the Cardinals used to love to do? (Perhaps that's an exaggeration.)

I do like how Adam Wainwright has been looking this spring, but Chris Carpenter's absence due to poor health is troubling. As fantastical as the Cardinals run to a title was last season, many things had to go right. Lightning rarely strikes twice like that.

(AP)It has become one of the angriest clichés in sports: A cable or satellite TV dispute that threatens to cost fans the chance to see games of their favorite team.

You know the story: A certain TV carrier can't agree on rights fees with a certain sports network, therefore fans are caught in the middle and, perhaps, left without a place to watch. That's what is happening in in southern California, where Fox Sports San Diego, a brand-new channel, plans to carry at least 157 San Diego Padres games this season. Only, FSSD hasn't reached an agreement with carriers Time Warner and AT&T — and isn't expecting to by opening day — so at least 200,000 customers will have to make other plans to watch the Friars.

Cable and satellite companies are always bickering about at rights fees. Sometimes, these annoying disagreements even cost fans a chance to see World Series games.

Via a tweet by John Ourand of Sports Business Journal, here's the latest statement from Fox on the Padres matter:

(Getty)Do you believe in Magic? For an astounding $2.15 billion dollars, a sum decided Tuesday night, Frank McCourt believes. That's how much the Los Angeles Dodgers will cost Magic Johnson's group, the Wall Street Journal reports. Johnson's consortium beat out two others — one that included St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke, and another that included billionaire Steve Cohen and former major-league manager Tony La Russa.

The record amount for a major-league team would top the $845 million the Ricketts family paid in 2010 for the Chicago Cubs. More importantly to Dodgers fans, it will take McCourt out of the Dodgers ownership loop after eight long years. McCourt bought the franchise for $430 million in 2004 but took it into bankruptcy. Well, he won't be bankrupt anymore once the deal closes.

[Related: Kobe Bryant, Lakers praise Magic Johnson for purchase of Dodgers]

Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times reports that there was no auction for the team, and that Magic's group also would control the parking lots around Dodger Stadium. (McCourt reportedly had been haggling over them.)

Johnson plans a news conference Wednesday in New York (but it's highly unlikely that he's moving the Dodgers back to Brooklyn).

Most of the money to buy the team wouldn't come from Johnson himself but from a firm called Guggenheim Baseball Partners, whose CEO is Mark Walter. Baseball operations would be headed by Stan Kasten, who used to be president of the Washington Nationals and, more successfully beforehand, the Atlanta Braves.

[Tim Brown: Magic Johnson, new ownership group will revitalize struggling Dodgers]

So Dodgers fans can rejoice because the McCourt nightmare is ending, and because it's Magic to the rescue.

(AP)Until excerpts of his autobiography were published, all we really knew about New York Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey was that he threw a knuckleball, that he seemed thoughtful and well-read, and that he scaled Mount Kilimanjaro just to see if he could. But based on the details released Tuesday in Sports Illustrated and the New York Daily News, he has experienced more harrowing moments than any human being should endure.

In the memoir "Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball," Dickey explores all of that in the abstract, but also some grim details about his ragged path to major-league success:

• Beginning when Dickey was 8 years old, he was sexually abused repeatedly by a 13-year-old female babysitter, and at least once by a 17-year-old male.

• As an adult, he contemplated suicide after cheating on his wife, Anne Dickey.

• His mom used to drag him along at age 5 to Nashville bars and drink until closing time.

• He slept in abandoned warehouses as a teenager.

• When he got to the major leagues with the Texas Rangers in 2001, Dickey found a syringe in a clubhouse bathroom stall. It could have been used for something harmless, Dickey says, but the Rangers of that era would come to be notorious for an association with performance-enhancing drugs.

It's rare for an active major leaguer to make such an announcement about anything touchy going on within a clubhouse, but the much bigger revelations, of course, were Dickey's personal horror stories as a child.

(Getty Images/BLS illustration)

Rejoice, rejoice, the baseball season is almost here! In an attempt to quickly get some of you slackers up to speed on the year ahead, Big League Stewards Kevin Kaduk and David Brown will again look at a division, hold a conversation about the issues therein and then issues some predictions on expected standings and award-winners. Up first is the AL East.

David Brown: 'Duk, my man, can you believe another offseason has passed and we're ready to start the 2012 regular season? And we are ready, right? Where did we leave off again? Of course, the damn New York Yankees. They took the AL East pretty convincingly a season ago, winning 97 games and finishing ahead by six games, even though they tanked it during the final week of the regular season. It was a relative cakewalk for the Bronx after the horror of finishing second — gasp! — in 2010. Hey, we all know it's a well-oiled machine, the most oiled machine in baseball, usually, but is there any way these guys slip up and don't win the division? Heck, does it even matter if they do slip? If the Yankees finish second, there's a great chance they'll make the playoffs anyway. Heck, with the added wild-card team, they could finish third and still make the playoffs now! What kind of a racket is that, anyhow?

(AP)

Baseball is back! Here at Big League Stew, we'll take a quick dash around the league each morning in an attempt to keep you updated on all the springtime story lines.

[Jeff Passan: Matt Bush takes sad, maddening fall from No. 1 MLB pick to jail]

• David Wright played as if he hadn't missed the first three weeks of spring training, hitting a single and making two strong plays at third base Monday in his delayed Grapefruit League debut for the New York Mets.

Wright, who had been out because of a strained abdominal muscle in his left side, might have been happiest with his defense, which included an athletic diving play to throw out Rafael Furcal of the Cardinals at first. Via the Associated Press:

"It was an action-filled day over there," Wright said. "I got a chance to dive around a little bit and run the bases a little bit, so that's a good thing."

The Mets had planned on keeping Wright out of game action Tuesday then playing him in two or three games in a row. But he will play Tuesday after all, Adam Rubin of ESPN reports. They hope he can accumulate about 30 at-bats before the season opener April 5.

• Left-hander Jon Lester of the Boston Red Sox dominated the Phillies, needing 90 pitches to strike out 10 over seven scoreless innings. Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe reports that it was the team's top pitching performance of the spring so far.

• The medical condition of Tony Tufano continues to worsen after a motorcycle he drove was struck in traffic by an SUV driven by Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Matt Bush. The Tampa Tribune reports that Tufano, 72, is in a medically induced coma. As for the ballplayer:

It ... is ... alive!

With opening day fast approaching and a new ballpark to open, the Miami Marlins have been preparing by putting their highly anticipated and already much-ridiculed home run display through some dry runs. And, from the looks of this YouTube video, we have some great news: When activated, the monstrosity is as grotesque, obnoxious and over the top as anyone possibly could have imagined.

But beware: It might not be safe for children, the elderly or people with epilepsy to watch:

The Champion Dog feeds three or four people. (Brad Newton/Texas Rangers)

Team president Nolan Ryan did not mince words with ESPN Radio in Dallas regarding the Texas Rangers' most recent acquisition — a two-foot-long, one-pound gourmet hot dog that feeds three or four fans and costs $26:

"It has to be a tremendous wiener. And then we're getting some kind of exotic bread flown in from France. And I don't know what kind of condiments you put on that. But I do want to look at it.

"That's a wild dog."

Holy StrasBurgers! Everything really is bigger in Texas. A result of the work of Rangers Ballpark chef Cristobal Vasquez, the dog is a Coney Island-style wiener that will be topped with shredded cheese, chili and sauteed onions. Not to mention the bun, apparently made of "exotic bread flown in from France" — which might be the most Nolan Ryan thing that Nolan Ryan has ever said.

[Related: Tim Tebow sandwich coming to Carnegie Deli]

But there seems to be a conflict as to what to call this monster weenie.