To the Point

Baseball Opens 2004 Season

The New York Yankees were routed today by a team most of the fans who packed the stadium had never heard of before. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays beat the Yankees on opening day-at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. As the rest of the teams get ready to play next week, why did Major League Baseball open the season in East Asia? Will the steroid scandal put asterisks in the record books and tarnish tradition, or do the fans really care? What-s baseball-s appeal to a new generation-brought up on sports so extreme they make football and basketball boring? Warren Olney looks the challenges facing America's favorite sport with baseball writers, a professor who writes about baseball as a business, a former head of the players' union and former Commission Fay Vincent. Making News: Condoleezza Rice to Testify in Public under Oath In a major reversal of policy by the White House, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice will be allowed to testify publicly, under oath, before the September 11 Investigating Commission. David Sanger, White House correspondent for the New York Times, says the turnaround is just one more example of a White House that declares a position on principle, then folds under overwhelming political pressure. Reporter-s Notebook: The Last Honest Place in America American investors suffered through the dot-com boom and learned that the quarterly reports of multi-national corporations can-t always be trusted. But in this age of uncertainty, gamblers always know in advance that the odds favor the House. Marc Cooper, author, contributing editor to The Nation, and host of the weekly program, Radio Nation, says that-s just one of the things that make Las Vegas The Last Honest Place in America.