May 2

Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan once called the house of cards bullpen structure "Creeping La Russaism." Right-hander in the seventh, a lefty for an out, another righty, and, if you have the lead in the ninth, the door opens and the closer walks out. But it had to be just right for that closer. Ninth inning, no one on. No Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter or Goose Gossage in the seventh. Heavens!

	Derek Lowe has allowed only two runs in 14 innings of work through Sunday.

But so often the cards fall. A closer goes haywire, gets hurt or old. Then the media makes his apprentice think he's been charged with the future of the free world.

When Kerrigan's boss Jimy Williams had the best closer in the league in 1998 in Tom Gordon, he often used him in the eighth inning, and 17 of Gordon's 48 saves were four outs or more. Gordon went down last season, and Williams first went to Tim Wakefield, then to Derek Lowe, and 13 of their combined 30 saves were 4-to-6 outs. Lowe is this year's closer, and in four of his first five saves he went two full innings.

"I don't see why you have to run your bullpen conventionally," says Cincinnati's Jack McKeon, who guided his team to 96 wins last season, when 22 of the 46 saves posted by Danny Graves and Scott Williamson were four outs or more. The White Sox, with one of the most promising bullpens in baseball, are using Keith Foulke and Bobby Howry to close.

A true sign of what's to come
Frank Robinson's swift, strong actions following the April 22 brawl between the Tigers and White Sox was another clear statement that now that Bud Selig has reconstructed the commissioner's office under the supervision of Sandy Alderson things are definitely going to be different.

Take the umpires. Once Alderson broke the rusted, corrupt umpires union and put all the arbiters under one roof, he set out to insure they hustle, huddle to get calls right (something the union used to frown on) and put an end to the confrontational approach so many umps had developed.

Where once the strike zone was supposed to be the bottom of the knee, it uniformly has crept up to above the knee, and in this age of hitters and small ballparks, forcing the ball up is suicidal for many pitchers.

Oh yes. Alderson had the baseballs tested again at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, as he did last year when he was comparing the Mizuno ball used in the Pan Am Games and the Rawlings ball used in major league baseball. Tests showed what Rawlings has asserted for years -- that the balls are not really any different. "It's the hitters who have changed," says Alderson.