But we have a few items to update:

* Baseball practice is hit-and-miss this week because of winter term finals. We hope to have a story on Adalberto Santos’ transition to center field sometime this week as a preview for the Maine series.

As we said yesterday, the pitching rotation isn’t set until midweek. We’ll speculate that Tyler Waldron, Greg Peavey, Tanner Robles and Matt Boyd will be the starters against trhe Black Bears, in a to-be-determined order.

Nothing  official but the feeling we get is that Sam Gaviglio might be another week or so away from starting.

* This weekend’s games with Maine start at 5:30 p.m. Friday, at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Saturday, and at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Some promotional info, from OSU’s Sports Information Department: At Saturday’s game. members of the GenBeavs can get outfield seating for free and their parents can purchase outfield tickets (seats located beyond the right field fence) for $10 apiece.

On Sunday, fans can get autographs from the team’s freshmen.

* Some baseball alumni news: The Mets assigned pitcher Eddie Kunz (2005-07) to triple-A Buffalo and the Padres assigned catcher Mitch Canham (2004-07) to their minor-league camp.

Canham could be placed at triple-A Portland for what probably will be the last season of PCL baseball in our state for many years, if not forever, since Portland can’t find a way to build a stadium to replace the once sold out from under the Beavers for the MLS Portland Timbers.

Back to work on Wednesday.

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Related posts:

1. Tuesday 4/7 updated 6:15 p.m.
2. Brooks Hatch: Mitch Canham’s at practice
3. Brooks Hatch: Tuesday update

Plenty of info came out of that, and now I have to condense it for public consumption. I’ll start with the spring depth chart. Be sure to read my comments for insight.

OFFENSE
Quarterback
Ryan Katz (He gets first snaps.)
Peter Lalich (There’s open competition for the starter role.)
Cody Vaz
Jack Lomax

Tailback
Jacquizz Rodgers
Jovan Stevenson
Ryan McCants
Jordan Jenkins

Fullback
Will Darkins
Clayton York
Dylan Parsons

Split end
Darrell Catchings
Markus Wheaton (This is a position change from flanker. And there’s open competition here. The loser doubles as the backup flanker).
Geno Munoz
Obum Gwacham

Slot
Jordan Bishop
Aaron Nichols
Kevan Walker
Mitch Singler

Flanker
James Rodgers
Micah Hatfield (Healthy from broken leg in bowl practice.)
Garett Hall
Kevin Cummings

Tight end
Brady Camp
Colby Prince

H-back
Joe Halahuni
John Reese

Left tackle
Michael Philipp
Timi Oshinowo
Wilder McAndrews (Testing if he can still play due long-term wrist injury.)

Left guard
Grant Johnson (Out of spring with shoulder injury)
Ryan Pohl
Michael Lamb
Rory Ross (Out of spring with knee injury)

Center
Alex Linnenkohl
Josh Andrews
Aaron Magnunson (This is new spot for him.)

Right guard
Burke Ellis (Wide open competition here.)
Colin Kelly (Moved from tackle to guard.)
Colin Lyons

Right tackle
Mike Remmers
Geoff Garner
Grant Enger

DEFENSE
Left end
Gabe Miller
Andrew Seumalo
Devon Kell
Mana Rosa (Out of spring with shoulder injury)

Left tackle
Stephen Paea
Casto Masaniai
Evan Hull
Ben Motter (Moved from offense to defense.)

Right tackle
Brennan Olander
Kevin Frahm (Moved from DE.)
Tonu Tuimalealiifano
Nate Hannah (Moved from offense to defense.)

Right end
Matt LaGrone
Taylor Henry
John Braun (Moved from offensive line.)
Mitchel Hunt (Out of spring with knee injury.)

Sam Linebacker
Keith Pankey (Out of spring with Achilles’ tendon injury, but expects to be back in fall.)
Devin Unga
Keo Camat
Paul Jones

Middle linebacker
Tony Wilson
Rueben Robinson
Kevin Unga
Walker Vave

Will linebacker
Dwight Roberson
Zane Norris
Michael Doctor

Left corner
James Dockery
Jordan Poyer (Moved from safety.)
Brian Watkins
Sean Martin (Out of spring with shoulder injury.)

Safety
Lance Mitchell
Josh LaGrone
Dax Dilbeck
Zeke Sanders

Safety
Cameron Collins
Suaesi Tuimaunei
Anthony Watkins
Levi Levasa

Right corner
Brandon Hardin
Keynan Parker
Rashaad Reynolds
Kaua Olds

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Related posts:

1. Spring depth chart
2. Depth chart
3. O-line depth chart

(ABOVE: Mill About Smartly.)

Block 15 — Mill About Smartly, 7 to 9 p.m. Poitin & Stout, 10 p.m. to midnight
Bombs Away Cafe — The Badfish Band (final show), 10 p.m., $6.

Calapooia Brewing Co. — Kyle Williams, 8 p.m.

Cloud 9 — Ordinance, 8 p.m., $5.

FireWorks — The Nettles, 6 p.m.

Flat Tail Brewery — Ordinance, 5:30 p.m.

Tom’s Peacock — Jonny Dark and the Wondertones, 9 p.m.

Cheers to green beers!

-Nancy

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“No, you can’t come,” I said, while reaching for the dog’s leash. “I’m going to walk for awhile and you probably won’t be able to keep up.”

Freeze the scene right there. Sometimes I wonder if I learned my parenting instincts from Homer Simpson University. Even with years of parenting experience, I still resort to my Crackerjack box of fatherhood theories.

That’s why I think, if you really listen, there’s something deep inside helping you out. In this case, the voice inside was screaming at me.

“HEY DORK DAD! This a chance to connect with your oldest teen son. This is the boy that would have a crane move him from the house to the car and carries on deep philosophical discussions with no more than grunts. You’re an idiot if you pass up this chance.”

Of course I acted like this was my plan all along. So I invited him to come with me.

We barely left the house before I started trash talking with him.

Think you can keep up with me, can you? I’m going to walk at least a mile. You sure you’re not going to need some oxygen, son? Huh? Huh? Huh? I did everything but pound my chest.

He didn’t say anything and just kept walking.

In less than two minutes, he’s already several paces ahead of me with the dog. I waited for me to insist that we turn back early. It didn’t happen.

See that little spec? That's my boy ... ahead of me.

I waited for him to start complaining. Nothing.

Twenty-five minutes later, we’re within a 100 yards from our house. I managed to break  into a trot and move past him until I reached the house.

Part of me thinks I can never let him catch up to me in anything. I’m Robert Duvall shooting baskets in the rain in The Great Santini because his son just kicked his butt in basketball. I resist the urge to challenge him to arm wrestling. Just to show him who’s the man.

But deep down, I know he’s growing older, stronger and he’s catching up.

And I’m OK with that.

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Back then there were a lot of pics on that board, of various subjects — ranging from Pete, Linc and Julie of “The Mod Squad” to 1960s Pittsburgh Pirate catcher Smoky Burgess — and the kids started looking the display over.

Truthfully, they were fairly disinterested in the newspaper, so I thought instead just to quiz them about three of the bigger names whose images were before them.

“The guy with the harmonica — anyone know who that is?” I asked. “Or the guy throwing the football? Or the guy in the coat and tie?”

“That’s Bob Dole,” one girl said, referring to the man wearing the tie.

“No,” I said. “That’s Richard Nixon.”

Blank looks and silence followed.

“President in the late 1960s and early 1970s, went to China, resigned amid the Watergate scandal?”

No one in the group had heard of Nixon. Or of legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas, “The Best There Ever Was.” Or of Bob Dylan.

That prompted me to write a column on what I call “cultural literacy,” which to me means knowing enough about major figures, dates, places, etc. that, well, you don’t embarrass yourself by your lack of knowledge.

This came up again recently when I suggested to my wife that everyone should be familiar with “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” She disagreed, but I posted that question on Facebook and roughly a dozen people agreed with me, against no dissent.

The other day in the newsroom, I described my colleague Karen Petersen as “the Larry Bird of city editors,” and another co-worker didn’t know who Larry Bird was. So I posted on Facebook, “Everyone should know who Larry Bird is, true or false.”

I think the vote tally was 17 trues, zero falses.

Footnote: Everyone should know who Bruce Springsteen is too, but apparently when Bird was midway through his NBA career, in the late 1980s, so focused was he on his craft that he was not familiar with the Boss. Asking someone who Springsteen was, Bird was said to be told, “He’s the you of rock and roll.”

Pretty apt description, really.

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That means there’s no need to move around any games into the middle of the week. This is also the first game of the season to be picked up for TV.

And one more from the ipod.

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Related posts:

1. Football schedule
2. Future football schedule
3. Cliff: Football schedule

The Beavers are back in the College Basketball Invitational and host Boston University on Wednesday.

Robinson was all for getting his team more playing time and practice. He knows that part of the postseason experience is building for the future.

 “There are some of the philosophy that if their team doesn’t play well enough, then they don’t deserve to go, which I always laugh at because if your team doesn’t play well enough, then you need more games and more practice,” Robinson said.

“We’re at a stage in our development where we need more. We have gotten to a point where for two seasons now at the end of the year we’re playing better than at the beginning of the year, so we want to see where that takes us.”

The Beavers will lose seniors Roeland Schaftenaar, Josh and Seth Tarver and Calvin Hampton when the season comes to a close.

“We’re going to replace them with a very young team. We don’t have a sophomore class, really, other than the walk-ons,” Robinson said. “So hopefully, if healthy, all five of our freshmen are going to be logging a lot of minutes. So getting them experience in tournament play is important. Getting them experience in just playing is important and training them in how to behave and how to practice after the season is over, that’s something else that you have to get used to so when you do make the NCAA tournament, you don’t have to spend three years trying to figure out how to advance.”

Check out my story in Tuesday’s Corvallis Gazette-Times or online at www.gazettetimes.com. I will have more on the matchup between the Beavers and the Terriers in Wednesday’s paper.

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Related posts:

1. Hampton: Beavers postseason-bound?
2. Hampton: Big win for the Beavers
3. Hampton: Beavers get job done

Well, Directv and Comcast reached an agreement to return Versus to the Directv programming lineup as it was in at the end of August 2009.

To fill out the post, here’s a return of what’s in my ipod.

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Related posts:

1. Cliff: Secrecy in sports
2. Cliff: Big sports weekend
3. Several news items

Long story short, basically what the nonpaid job entailed was scheduling, publicizing and running the panel’s meetings, which, for reasons that seemed beyond my control, became increasingly worse attended as time progressed.

Partway through my term, I decided that this type of volunteer activity was not the sort that suited me best — basically, I hate meetings — and resolved, upon completion of my term, to step aside in favor of someone else.

Apparently, that someone else never materialized because for at least a half-dozen years additional years I regularly received mail from Benton County addressed to me as the NBCAC Chairman, even after I called the county to make plain my status as ex-chairman.

My point here, though, is not to make the county look  bad; these things happen.

Here’s my point: Volunteerism is a fantastic thing, and a big key is volunteering in areas you actually enjoy and are at least sort of good at.

For example, I coached my son Bob in baseball and basketball through eighth grade and absolutely loved the experience. I was the scorekeeper for my daughter Pam’s basketball teams and loved that too. And in both cases, especially the coaching, I really felt like I was making a positive difference.

Nowadays I’m involved with group called Fences for Fido. One of the organizers is my friend Kelly Peterson, a former Albany and Lebanon resident who now lives in Portland and works for the Humane Society of the United States.

FFF’s clients are families with dogs who for one reason or another are chained up a lot of the time, or in some cases all the time. For these families, the group fences in part of their yard for the dog, for free, thanks to those who donate supplies and labor.

I’m one of the laborers. I love dogs and, having lived most of my adult life in the country, I’m a better than average fence builder, so this is a great fit for me. We built a fence in Albany on Saturday, and FFF will return to Linn County on April 10 with “builds” in Lebanon, Waterloo and Sweet Home. Get ahold of me if you’re interested in helping out.

My other regular volunteer activity these days, if you can call it that, is donating blood — every 55 days, as often as the Red Cross allows. It’s a really easy way to do something important, especially for someone like me with great veins; that’s what the phlebotomists always tell me anyway.

I’m giving blood this afternoon in fact, at the Old Armory Building in Albany. Maybe I’ll see you there.

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The Oregon State gymnastics team moved up one spot in the rankings to No. 7 in the nation with a regional qualifying score of 196.460.

Alabama is No. 1 (197.155) with Oklahoma (196.935), UCLA (196.900), Georgia (196.690), Florida (196.685) and Arkansas (196.510) right behind.

The Beavers are No. 4 on the floor (49.300), No. 5 on the beam (49.090), tied for No. 5 on the bars (49.195) and tied for No. 10 on the vault (49.200).

Mandi Rodriguez is No. 13 in the all-around (39.385) and Makayla Stambaugh is tied for No. 21 (39.220). They are tied for No. 3 on the floor (9.920).

Laura-Ann Chong is No. 4 on the bars (9.910) and Rodriguez is No. 5 on the vault (9.925).

Check out the floor routines from Friday’s meet Utah above and below.

Injury update
Freshmen Kelsi Blalock and Leilani Alferos remain out of the lineup, leaving the Beavers with 10 active gymnasts. Blalock returned to practice after her ankle injury, but is expected to miss her seventh meet. Alferos is coming back from her bicycle accident and will miss her fourth meet.

Leslie Mak competed on bars for the first time last week since Jan. 16 due to an elbow injury. Olivia Vivian returned last from a knee injury that kept her off the beam and floor.

“We are slowly moving in the right direction there,” coach Tanya Chaplin said.

Wrestling preview
Here’s a link to the wrestling team preview headed into the NCAAs on Thursday in Omaha, Neb. Oh the memories of Omaha. What a great place to party for two weeks with baseball as a backdrop.

That town has been good to the Beavers in recent years. We’ll see what the wrestlers can do.

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Related posts:

1. Cliff: Gymnastics rankings
2. Cliff: Gymnastics rankings
3. Cliff: Gymnastics rankings (updated)