Martinez, Benes join front office

Having grown up watching the Louisville Redbirds at the old Cardinal Stadium, I had the chance to watch Alan Benes come up through the system back when he was a top prospect. It's unfortunate that his career was plagued by injuries. After he announced his retirement, Cardinals management asked if he would join the staff. Benes is joined by Dennis Martinez as a rookie coach within the organization.

Martinez, with 562 big-league starts and 245 wins in a 23-year career, has joined the Cardinals' minor-league staff as a pitching coach, his first coaching gig with a major-league organization. Fresh from retirement, Martinez's fellow rookie coach, Alan Benes, has signed on as a special assistant to Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty.

Martinez said: "This year I wanted to gain experience on the field, somehow, someplace."

Benes, who made 30 appearances for Class AAA Memphis last year, will work in both the front office and on the field this season. He'll scout some. He'll coach some. He'll work with the Memphis and Class AA Springfield pitching staffs.[...]

"It was very easy," Benes, 35, said. "Absolutely no regrets, no second thoughts, no desires to still be playing."

Once Benes notified the Cardinals of his retirement, Jocketty approached him about joining the staff.

Martinez, 51, had been a special assistant with Baltimore before seeking a coaching position. A friendship with Jeff Luhnow, a Cardinals vice president and new farm director, led to an offer to be the pitching coach for the Cardinals' new Gulf Coast League club. The Palm Beach-based team offered Martinez the chance to stay close to his Miami home and his son, who pitches at a local university.

Cardinals pitcher Mark Mulder has started his usual spring training routines with the exception of throwing with his arm.

In some other baseball news, it appears that there is a strong chance thar Roger Clemens has thrown his last pitch as a major league baseball player. Another possible retirement includes Tom Glavine, a pitcher with the New York Mets, who I believe will go into the Hall of Fame wearing a cap from his days with the Atlanta Braves.

Tom Glavine is inching closer to 300 wins -- and retirement.

Needing 10 victories to reach the milestone, the New York Mets' ace sounds as though he plans to call it quits after this season.

"I don't want to sit here and say definitively," Glavine said Friday, when Mets pitchers and catchers took their physicals. "If I don't win 300 games for some reason, I will play -- unless my arm blows out and that's the end of it."

Only twice in 19 full major league seasons has Glavine failed to win at least 10 games (1988 and 2003).

The left-hander, who will turn 41 next month, was 15-7 with a 3.82 ERA in 198 innings last year. Then he went 2-1 with a 1.59 ERA in three playoff starts as the Mets advanced to Game 7 of the NL championship series before losing to St. Louis.

MLB responds with regards to the pending agreement with DirecTV.

We meet fans' demands
We offer the following assurances to our fans: Any deal for the Major League Baseball's Extra Innings subscription package, when concluded, will in no way affect a single fan's ability to watch games of his home club in his home market. Major League Baseball will continue to make available on basic cable, satellite and broadcast television more games by far than any other sport (on average, more than 400 games per year are telecast in each market); a subscription package of out-of-market games will continue to be available to a broad segment of our fan base through either MLB Extra Innings or MLB.TV, its broadband counterpart.

MLB has consistently sought to do the best job possible of marketing the game to our fans. Through the ballpark experience, TV, radio, satellite radio, broadband and the Internet, wireless, licensed products and sponsor marketing initiatives, we look to meet the demands of our fans in as many ways as possible for one simple reason: It's good business. We always act according to our belief that if we do what we think is in the fans' best interests, our business will benefit. And, guided by that principle, we have achieved record success in the past five years.

We have had fair and open negotiations with cable, satellite and telephone company distributors regarding the distribution of a new MLB dedicated channel to all our fans and the continuation of the MLB Extra Innings package. We believe that the launch of an MLB-dedicated channel as part of a basic service will be a great benefit to all of our fans, as it will provide a wide diversity of baseball programming, 24/7. Our goal remains to provide as much MLB programming as we can to the maximum number of viewers, and any consummated deal will reflect that.

Tim Brosnan is Major League Baseball's executive vice president, business.

Mr. Brosnan has it all wrong. MLB is not meeting the demands of the fans. There are only 15 million users of DirecTV. In addition, there are those of us fans that live in apartments or dormitories that are unable to subscribe to any satellite service. Currently, to watch my favorite team play, I would have to purchase MLB TV in order to watch out of market games since I am located in Reds country. The only games that I am able to see, baseball-wise, are on FSN Ohio, ESPN, TBS, WGN, FOX, and that's it. FSN Midwest is not carried in my part of the state and I honestly hope that changes for my sake.

Furthermore, I would rather watch the Cardinals broadcasters broadcast a game rather than the home team's broadcasters. I would hope that MLB would change that eventually.

Diamonds are for Humor responds to Brosnan's remarks. This is worth the read.