Major League Soccer avoided a potential work stoppage over the weekend. Thank goodness. The league agreed to throw in one extra pair of shoelaces per player; the players agreed to stop their whining and be grateful that their fourteen-year-old league still manages to scrape together enough money to pay their salaries.

I couldn't even tell you when the MLS season started. Or ended. It's an oddly long season, that's about all I know. That, and the fact that it's interspersed with random Cups and Championships and other distracting, non-league sanctioned get-togethers. I have a feeling that a real MLS game could be going on and if some interesting enough opponent showed up at halftime they'd postpone the game, draw straws to see who picked first and end up playing dodgeball all second half to determine who got the ball first in the inaugural What-the-Hell-Just-Happened?-Cup.

And they were gonna strike. Brilliant move, gentlemen. Really.

In unrelated news, Joe Mauer, the American League MVP from last season, has agreed to spend the rest of his productive baseball years in, yes, Minnesota. The Twinkies managed to hold onto their cornerstone catcher for the jaw-dropping amount of $184 million from 2011 to 2018. The only baseball players getting paid more per year actually all play for the Yankees.

So don't get too excited just yet, Minnesota; you've got a ways to go before you get your first bloatedly entitled World Series Championship trophy.

On a side-note, Joe Mauer just announced he's bought the MLS, fired all the players, and replaced all of them with trained circus elephants. While nobody's sure what this will mean for the quality of the actual soccer, everybody agrees that circus elephants have really big feet and are much more nimble than they appear, both of which bode well for the kicking part of the game.

Anybody with ideas on how Mauer should spend the remaining $183.9 million from his new contract should feel free to send them along to the Eccentric.

Speaking of nimble, Tiger Woods is making his return to professional golf next month at the Masters. Uh huh. Well, it's none of my business, I guess. But I can't help thinking that this will be the greatest thing to happen to the PGA since, oh, I don't know, Tiger's first Masters win back in 1997. That year, the child prodigy did things to Augusta National and the rest of the field that people are still trying to explain. This year the embarrassed, apologetic father of two will breathe new life into the PGA for at least the second time in his career, if not the third.

No matter how uncomfortable the allegations against Woods, no matter how much they make the country-club-set blush and squirm in their blazers, nobody even bothers to hide their gratitude at Woods' return. While some of Woods' major sponsors have chosen to part ways with the golfer, others have stayed true, and still others have decided to play Switzerland and fade into the background until they can get a better read on Tiger's Q-score. You can bet that if Tiger plays well and is well received, he'll be back doing shaving adds with Roger Federer and Thierry Henry in no time.

As far as "no time" is concerned, that's exactly how long my NCAA tournament brackets lasted. Once again, I've contributed to someone else's exciting weekend getaway by buying a sheet and picking every conceivable incorrect outcome. I had teams falling out of my Elite Eight on the first day and my national champion was gone before my head hit the pillow on Saturday night. Six of my Sweet Sixteen teams are still dancing, five of my Elite Eight could still show up, and three of Final Four teams have, so far, escaped life support. But Kansas, my thick-headed choice for National Champion, losing to Northern Iowa (I blame Kurt Warner) pretty much threw the biggest pile of dirt onto my coffin.

About the only thing that could make this year's tournament worse for me is if Ohio State somehow wins the whole stupid thing and I have to put up with Bucknut nation going bonkers about their newest national champion. The only thing that'll bring a smirk to my face about that possible outcome will be the assured knowledge that those self-same Bucknuts will, guaranteed, celebrate the only way they know how: burning their own stuff in the streets, smashing things, and generally acting like slack-jawed yokels.

It almost makes their winning worth it.

Stephen Strasburg, the Nats fireballing rookie, will start this coming season in Harrisburg, PA, playing for the Nats' AA-affiliate Senators. Google Maps assures me this is a two-hour, fifteen-minute drive, so a roadtrip is most probably in order. I'm betting that the savings on concessions alone will pay for the price of gas. Strasburg finished his first spring training season having allowed only two earned runs, striking out twelve and walking only one. Other than the two solo homers that accounted for those two earned runs, Strasburg was a groundball-inducing machine. He's as good as advertised to date and, if he stays healthy, could be the kind of cornerstone for the Nats that Alexander the Great has been for the Caps.

And last, VIP Baseball announced the finalists for Loudoun's new professional baseball team: the Dulles Blue Heron, the Virginia Silver Stars, and the Loudoun Hounds. You can vote for your preferred choice at http://www.vipbaseball.net

Or you can not vote and simply wonder how bad the other options must have been if those were the three best choices.

Go Cornell.