Wire Check - 4/6

Baseball

Bruce Jenkins MLB Preview: East, Central, West. Jenkins also gets all, "Get off my dang lawn!" and wants maple bats out of baseball.

A look at the Giants/A's battle over Silicon Valley. It's picking up steam after A's owner, Lew Wolff, asked Bud Selig to look into stadium possibilities last month followed by the Giants buying 25% ownership in their San Jose single A minor league team.

Baggarly goes over the Giants' opening day roster. Plus, Zito has a new locker and other tidbits.

Kawakami's 2009 MLB predictions. RT, a staunch Rowand supporter, should love the first paragraph:

* Could Aaron Rowand become a $12M part-time player? Baggs doesn’t go that far (because he’s way smarter than me), but he points out that one reason the Giants could be keeping extra OFs on the roster is for late-inning defensive replacement possibilities. For Rowand. Who won a Gold Glove two years ago and was not very good in his first year as a Giant CF last year. And Rowand’s first year plus his lousy spring means there’s no reason to keep him in for extra ABs.

RT, I thought Rowand was all about defense? Kawakami also has the Mercury News "experts" picks, including four out of five picking the Red Sox to make the World Series with three picking them to win. Note: Boston winning the title was RT's BOLD prediction.

John Shea doesn't think it will be hard to get tickets to see the A's or Giants this season.

Giants fans have to wait until Tuesday for opening day, and the wait might get a little longer.

Cam Inman scouted the Giants and A's on Friday night.

NCAA Championship

Kawakami says the Tar Heels are too good to lose.

Hockey

The Sharks went 1-1 in the home-@home weekend with the Ducks. Mark Purdy says the President's trophy(awarded to team with best regular season record in NHL) is not what the Sharks really want.

Football

David White looks at various Raiders mock draft picks. Somebody's probably right.

Jerry Mac ponders a possible Jeff Garcia return to the Bay Area, but not to the 49ers.

Crotchety Lowell Cohn says Cutler would have been bad for the 49ers. Whatever. I'm pretty sure he'd be better than Hill/Smith.

Jason Jones participated in a couple mock drafts and ended up taking Andre Smith in both.

Bee-rows answers 49ers questions from lowly readers.

Ratto being Ratto

Ray Ratto looks at sports divas who have been recently pimp-slapped back into reality.

Basketball

Janny Hu wrote something I found mildly entertaining. The Magnificent Seven! Get it? Seven! BTW, Azubuike and Turiaf might have been the best Warriors' free agent signings I can remember.

Again, MT-II is the best Warriors beat writer by about 5 million miles.