Major League Baseball returns this month, but instead of a triumphant opening day at Fenway Park, the World Champion Red Sox open their 2008 quest for glory with two games in Tokyo, Japan, on March 25 and 26 against the Oakland Athletics. On April 1 and 2, they visit Oakland, and follow with three games in Toronto before finally taking the field in Fenway on April 8 against the Detroit Tigers.

By the way, if you want to watch those Tokyo games, shake it out early, because they start at 6:07 a.m., our time.

This is not the platform to pass judgement on the steroid question and its impact and the game itself. Those of us who really love the game are a few steps above most fans and their legions of hero worshippers. Baseball at any level does not need questionable practices or unresolved issues. Enough said.

We in southern Maine have a unique treasure with the very able Red Sox in striking distance and the Sea Dogs offering the best available showcase of pure baseball. But if you think Manchester, N.H., wouldn’t like something as luscious as the Sea Dogs franchise, you don’t believe there are mosquitos in Scarborough. All the more reason to support and enjoy the Doggies.

My introduction to baseball came in my hometown by shagging ground balls at Crosby Park’s barren and rocky infield. If we were lucky, some of us would become owners of scruffy, worn-out baseballs from members of the local Eastern Maine League team, or that most magical of all gifts, a cracked and broken bat ready for an application of black friction tape. Many a base hit resounded from those all too heavy bats.

Baseball took on a new meaning with the advent of television. I was in western Connecticut, at my in-laws, when I first saw the game on the tube. In the early 1950s and before much TV had reached Maine, it was a crude display by today’s standards.

A wiggling picture in varying shades of gray from Yankee Stadium, it showed the Bronx guys against a team I cannot remember. I think Graham McNamee was behind the mike. The picture was set on the batter’s box and showed little else. A dangling microphone perched over the home plate area added a realistic sound feed. As time went on, however, the home-plate mic picked up the salty language and vociferous comments when arguments erupted, and the suspended microphone forever left the scene.

Sophisticated coverage of baseball today, both by radio and television, has brought the game to millions of fans on a daily basis, although saturated with commercials and too many off-field distractions. The Red Sox have an able TV team in Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy, while the radio broadcast, over 68 New England stations, is led by 25-year-old veteran Joe Castiglione.

Most of us, especially on the TV side, feel there are too many interviews in the broadcast booth, probably decisions made by other than Remy or Orsillo. The Red Sox, through many years, have done a terrific job in their support of the Jimmy Fund. Some of us feel that they should concentrate their efforts in this direction and not have so many interviews in the booth for other such worthwhile funds. By the same token, I don’t particularly care if a movie or TV personality happens to be in Fenway Park, and an interview in that direction has little to do with baseball, already marred by an increased barrage of commercials.

A tradition of televised baseball has always been a display of current game statistics, runs, hits and errors at the end of each half inning. Have you noticed that tidbit being replaced by the between-innings flood of commercials?

Speaking of television advertising, in the 50-odd years of baseball on the tube, none has approached or matched those delightful cartoon offerings of the then-Narragansett Brewing Company. From first to last, they fit very well in the new medium.

Now, as the new season nears, some questions you might ask:

Can the Red Sox repeat? Will Manny be Manny? Or equally important, will Terry Francona ever run out of spit? And, for Major League Baseball in general, will the steroid coverup continue?

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