Scott Rolen has that look of a veteran. The third basemen sports a scruffy beard, receding hairline and an experienced look in his eyes.

That experience is exactly what the Cincinnati Reds have needed since his arrival late last season. On top of that, Rolen has given the Reds an unexpected boost on the offensive end with 11 home runs this season.

The New York Yankees are considered the preppy jerk of Major League Baseball.

They expect to win a championship every year simply because they are the Yankees.

This obviously puts tremendous pressure on the players, especially the high priced free agents the Yankees always pick up.

But if any entering Yankee wants to succeed in the Big Apple, here's really all he has to do.

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Tonight, my wife and I took the trip up to Montclair State University to meet Yogi Berra at his book signing event. It was a fun event for both of us and something we enjoyed doing together.

The Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center is located on the campus of Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey.

Last week, Roy Oswalt spoke publicly about wanting to be traded. He did not want to waste his final years playing for a terrible Astros team.

He wanted a shot to win a championship.

In New York, we get excited when a team ponders about trading a star player or when a player demands to be traded. We assume the Yankees and the Mets will get involved.

I was sitting on my couch on Tuesday night and turned on the Cincinnati Reds-Pittsburgh Pirates game, mainly to watch Mike Leake pitch. In the top of the eighth, Leake got into a little bit of trouble and Dusty Baker called on Arthur Rhodes to help bail out him out.

Here is the beautiful thing about writing: you start to watch a baseball game with a thought in mind about what or whom you are going to write and then something happens during the course of a game that completely changes your train of thought.

The New York Mets have long been without a presence of leadership and consistent confidence. You have to look back into Mets lore to find several players who exuded those attributes.

One of them is Edgardo Alfonzo. While with the Mets , he became a leader and an example. He was what is called "clutch."

After the Mets dominated the Phillies in the first two games of a three-game series, every team in the NL East is above .500, and separated by only three games. So, with the recent resurgence of New York, the silent emergence of the Nationals (sans Stephen Strasburg), and the struggling Phillies, the question is worth asking: Is the NL East that good, or that bad?

Let’s break it down.

The Good

After opening the season at Triple-A, Brett Cecil was recalled to step into Brian Tallet’s spot in the rotation after he landed on the DL.  Since making his 2010 debut on April 23, Cecil has had his share of good and bad, compiling the following statistics:

4 Wins
41.2 Innings
4.10 ERA
1.15 WHIP
33 Strikeouts (7.1 K/9)
12 Walks (2.6 BB/9)
.275 BABIP

In 2008, when the New York Yankees did the unthinkable and missed the postseason, team co-owner Hank Steinbrenner made an off-the-cuff comment about the best teams being shut out of the playoffs because of their tougher division, while a team like the Los Angeles Dodgers (with an paltry 84-78 record) made it in.

It was humorous because he was comparing his team to one in a different league, where his argument would have held a little more water had he complained about the Chicago White Sox making the postseason even though they finished a half-game worse than the Bronx Bombers.

With baseball a full two months in the books, teams are starting to make their runs toward the All-Star break.

With so much parity in MLB, teams with nearly identical records are separated by a few spots, sometimes more.

There are still many teams in realistic contention for their division title, but I will narrow it down to five teams right now that we could see playing in late October.

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