Scott Miller

If healthy players are happy players, then Pedro Martinez apparently is feeling very good this spring. Had a fun exchange with him early Saturday morning in which we started talking about how long he's been playing, which led me to ask how long he wants to play.

"I'm 36. How many years after 36 did Roger (Clemens) play?" Pedro demanded.

Well, that's difficult to say, I told him, given how Clemens keeps un-retiring. But he played until he was 41 or 42 I told Martinez, momentarily blanking that he actually was 44 during his half-season with the Yankees last summer.

"Well then, when I'm 41, 42, we'll talk," Pedro shot back. "So far, let's not talk about that. I'm only 36. I'm still a young buck. Unless (baseball) says goodbye. Tom Glavine was 41 last year when he pitched here. Do I look that old?"

Absolutely not, I told Pedro. Besides, I teased him, looking for a rise, you're prettier.

"I'm not prettier!" Pedro shrieked. "I'm handsome. Pretty is my wife."

About that time, reliever Scott Schoeneweis, who had been listening from a couple of lockers down, chimed in.

"You're a snappy dresser, though," he kidded Pedro.

-- One other exchange worth passing along: Mike Pelfrey, the 6-7 right-hander, is dressing across from newcomer Johan Santana, which is interesting in that Santana could have been Pelfrey's ticket out of town. At various times this winter, Pelfrey's name popped up in proposed packages to Minnesota for Santana.

I asked Pelfrey whether it was a restless winter for him, and he gave me the cliche ballplayers' answer that you try not to pay attention to the rumors.

"You hear stuff from friends, and whatever happens, you've got to make the most of it," Pelfrey said.

The most interesting part of the discussion, and a glimpse into how excited the Mets are to have Santana, came when Pelfrey said this about the former AL Cy Young winner: "It was a huge pickup for this team. I would have given up the whole farm system for him."

Santana's a great pitcher and all, but if Pelfrey doesn't become a general manager when his playing days are finished, you'll know why.

Likes: The father and son (who was perhaps 10) playing catch in the parking lot at Tradition Field in Port St. Lucie when I pulled in early Saturday morning. ... Chien-Ming Wang losing his arbitration case the other day and being awarded a $4 million salary instead of his requested $4.6 million. Sorry, Mr. Wang, no malice, but $4 million is still a nice raise over the $489,500 you earned last year. ... This sign on the dugout fence of one of the Mets' practice fields: "No seeds, No tobacco, No gum." Gee, no wonder they couldn't hang on and win last year if that's how they prepare for the season. ... The New York Post's Mike Vaccarro, one of the good guys in the business, is working on a follow-up to his 2006 book Emperors and Idiots, about the history of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. His latest work is a book on the 1912 World Series between the Red Sox and the New York Giants. 1912, huh, I asked him. "My goal is to never write a book again where I have to talk to somebody," Vaccarro quipped. "You can't libel the dead."

Dislikes: The Mets' black warmup tops. Ugh. ...

Sunblock day? Most definitely. Hot sun, temperatures up to 82, 83 degrees Saturday on the eastern side of Florida. Outstanding.

Rock-n-Roll lyric of the day:

"I ain't got much sense

"But I still got my feet"

-- Bruce Springsteen, Girls in Their Summer Clothes

VERO BEACH, Fla. -- Whoo hoo, spring training at last! Time to break from the storm of steroid disc--

Ah, not so fast. One thread running from the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C., all the way down south to the Yankees' spring base in Tampa, Fla., having to do with the one player not retired who was deposed earlier this month, is extraordinarily interesting and relevant.

What you've probably heard about Andy Pettitte, that he's caring, sensitive and earnest, is true. Which brings up an important question: How will Pettitte, whom the Yankees have given permission to arrive a few days late to camp, handle things once he arrives?

"That's a hell of a question," said Dodgers manager Joe Torre, who remains close to Pettitte after managing him in the Bronx for seven seasons. "I don't think anybody knows what the answer will be."

Even better questions are these: Will the subject dog Pettitte, 35, so badly that it affects his game? Will it haunt him into a premature retirement? He's already pondered retirement in the past, and talk about a sensational story. Not only did he admit using human growth hormone, but he obtained some of it from his father.

Plus, while he may be a good guy, let's not nominate him for sainthood. The guy may have come to the truth, but he arrived slowly and late. Upon release of the Mitchell Report, Pettitte said he used HGH twice. Now, suddenly, it's more than that.

"I feel for Andy," Torre said. "I've been with him for a long time and I still feel close to him. He always enjoyed the fact that there were others there for the press to talk to instead of him.

"I'm sure he'll be uncomfortable. I know he's a professional and he'll get through it, but it won't be comfortable for him."

Another Dodger who came of age in the Yankees' organization when Pettitte and Clemens were there, pitcher Scott Proctor, remains surprised that Pettitte finds himself in this predicament.

"You never expect something like that," Proctor said. "We all have to deal with temptation, and there are many different ones. The decision he made, he has to live with now."

Lots of people thought that Jason Giambi never would be able to play in New York again after he was caught up in the BALCO web because he cares too much about what people think of him, but GIambi hung in there and made it work.

Pettitte now faces the biggest challenge of his career, and who would have ever figured that perhaps Giambi, of all people, would be in position to offer a piece or two of advice?

Likes: Ryan Dempster predicting the Cubs will break their 100-year drought and win the World Series this year. What's he supposed to say? that he came to spring training thinking about a second-place finish? Or getting to the playoffs but getting knocked out in the first round by Arizona, like last year? Maybe Joe Namath's "guarantee" that the Jets would win the Super Bowl was shocking in 1968, but is it so shocking that one of today's players would be so bold as to come out and say something like that? Times have changed. People say all sorts of things today. Sometimes they even believe what they say. ... David Letterman on The Late Show revealing an "incident" related to Roger Clemens' appearance before Congress this week: "Clemens vehemently denied using steroids and at one point got so angry he snapped the Washington Monument in half like a twig." ... XM satellite radio in my rental car this spring. ... Doc's All-American burger joint in Boca Raton. Excellent cheeseburgers, and juicy.

Dislikes: Are we going to have to track down every one of the 89 players fingered as guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs in the Mitchell Report this spring? We are? It's going to be excruciating reading every day over the next three months.

Sunblock day? Absolutely. Strong start to the spring in Vero Beach, where it was a hot sun and about 75 degrees on Friday.

Rock-n-Roll lyric of the day:

For all you people included in the Mitchell Report. ...

"I ain't got the time

"And if my daddy thinks I'm fine

"He's tried to make me go to rehab

"I won't go, go, go"

-- Amy Winehouse, Rehab

In dealing Erik Bedard to Seattle on Friday and Miguel Tejada to Houston in December, Baltimore president Andy MacPhail acquired 10 different players, and even if the Orioles now may have to summon Charlie Brown to be their opening day starter, this is exactly the kind of thinking this decrepit organization needs.

Amassing young players -- not sending Snoopy's master to the hill.

The Orioles, rotting to the core in the Peter Angelos years, stink. They're long overdue for an overhaul, and the fact that MacPhail now has been able to pull off two major deals in the past two months signals that things are as promised when he accepted the job, that he's got the freedom to re-make the team without Angelos' mitts interfering.

The crown jewel of the haul is Adam Jones, a 22-year-old phenom from Seattle who likely will be Baltimore's opening day center fielder and one day could be an All-Star. The rest of the prospects acquired from the Mariners and Astros range from hard-throwing pitching prospects to unpolished position players.

Maybe not all of them will turn out. Maybe many of them won't click.

Odds are, however, that Jones and at least a couple others will -- lefty Troy Patton and righty Matt Albers, perhaps? -- and that still leaves the Orioles far ahead of where they are now.

Without Bedard, one of the best young pitchers in the game, the Orioles right now probably can't even hazard a guess on their opening day starter.

And that makes things even worse for Baltimore than they were last year, or two or three years ago, when the Orioles knew who would start on opening day?

Au contraire.

Enough of swinging for the fences in Baltimore. Boog Powell is gone, Brady Anderson's one year of power was a mirage and so, too, have been the Orioles. The standings over the past decade have shown as much and the fans have spoken by a mass exodus from Camden Yards.

Baltimore's current run of 10 consecutive sub-.500 seasons is the worst in club history. Tejada, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Brian Roberts, B.J. Ryan, Bedard ... new hopes have come, new hopes have gone, and all it's proven is that you can slap a new coat of paint on the house, but if the wood is bad, it ain't going to last.

The Orioles need depth, not sheen, and they finally have an executive who understands this.

It was a heavy price to pay for Seattle, five players for a lefty pitcher who can be a free agent following the 2009 season, but the Mariners are buoyed by the hope of last season's second-place finish (six games behind the Angels in the AL West) following a three-season freefall.

Man-for-man, they don't yet measure up with the Angels, AL West winners in three of the past four seasons. But Bedard and Felix Hernandez present an imposing one-two punch atop the Seattle rotation, and free agent Carlos Silva joins Jarrod Washburn and Miguel Batista to lengthen a rotation that should keep the Mariners in contention for much of the summer at worst, and, with a few breaks, maybe even sneak past the Angels at best.