The Yankees should trade A-Rod while he still has value.<>

<>Why? Because the Yankees don't need him as much as the potential players they could get for him in a trade.

All season long, as the Yankees took advantage of the Red Sox' injuries and sub-par performances from off-season acquisitions (Lowell, Crisp, Beckett), all baseball fans heard about was how the Yankees were fielding an all-All-Star lineup that was bashing its way to victory after victory. But we heard little about the Yanks' pitching staff, which is getting older and less effective each year.

Detroit knocked them out of the playoffs because of the adage, "Good Pitching Beats Good Hitting." So for all that offensive firepower, the Yankees still couldn't beat good pitching, and A-Rod was just one of the Yankee hitters who had a miserable postseason.

So, the Yankees could have made the postseason even without A-Rod in their lineup, but they might have advanced if their pitching staff was better.

Trading A-Rod before his career begins to fade could net the Yankees some younger pitching that could, within a few years, give New York the kind of dominant pitching staff necessary to compete for more World Series titles in the near future. 

I should be ashamed of myself that I haven't written about Moxie sooner.

Moxie is our girl. She came to our house when she was about 8 weeks old. Nobody knows where she came from, but she was found on a tobacco farm near the Kentucky River. From the start, she's been very passive. She didn't play as a puppy, she just slept.

<>We think she's a border collie/pitbull mix. When I got her, I started training her using Barbara Woodhouse's books. Moxie doesn't lick, doesn't jump up on people, and barks very rarely. She adapted very well. For the last year and a half, she goes to work with me almost every day. Everyone at work loves her. One of the ladies even taught her to 'shake' in order to get cookies. I never thought she'd learn a trick. She always acted insulted when I tried to teach her.

Now that she's approaching her 8th birthday, she doesn't play frisbee anymore. She can't run fast enough to catch the frisbee before it hits the ground.  We've even had to cut back on the tennis ball, because I think she's getting arthritis. She hobbles around for a good day after a game of fetch.

I express my deepest sympathies to the friends and family of those who perished here in Lexington Sunday morning when Comair Flight 5191 crashed at Bluegrass Airport.

<>Monday, the local paper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, desperate to give its two cents worth (when they didn't have even one cent worth of input) broke tradition of not posting a Monday editorial by publishing this drivel.

<>My beefs with the editorial are multiple: First, the editorial staff had NOTHING to add to the discussion, but they couldn't wait until they did. Second, if you read the first two paragraphs, it begs the question, "Where exactly did they expect the next air disaster to occur?" Third, they failed to include such a simple statement as, "Our deepest sympathies go out to the families who lost loved ones in the accident." Fourth, the paper lauds the workers who said prayers over the deceased, when in any other instance, it would bash civil servants from engaging in prayer. Fifth, the question it demands be answered, "Why did the pilot take the runway meant for smaller craft?" may never be fully answered, especially if the lone survivor of the crash dies before he can give any sort of explanation. Sixth, the closing paragraph does little more than exacerbate unwarranted fears that this tragedy could easily happen again.

<>Comair will be taking family members who are here in Lexington out to the crash site tomorrow for a private memoial service. The media are expected to be banned from attending.