And Florida (80-70) would have to win 11 of its remaining 12 just to tie.

Sayonara, Marlins.

Home cookin'. The Eagles are 1-3 in their last four home openers, 3-4 since moving to the Linc and 4-7 in openers under Andy Reid.

A memorable send-off. Cincinnati's Jonny Gomes did a nice thing last week.

That's not unusual, as not all baseball players are the misanthropic, greedy louts they can appear to be.

What makes Gomes' action amazing what this - he did a nice thing for a member of the media!

On Wednesday, the Cincinnati Reds honored Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News, who will retire at season's end after 37 years covering the team.

Before the game, Gomes kidded McCoy about hitting a homer in his honor. Sure enough, he went deep in the top of the second to give McCoy a special memory.

By Thursday afternoon, Gomes had signed, sealed and delivered the bat to McCoy as a small tribute to the writer's Hall of Fame career.

"This is just my first go-around here," Gomes told CNati.com, "but I'm big on two things that I always bring to the ballpark: first is respect the game and second is hustle.

"I've always had a good relationship with the media. I figure if you do those two things, it's hard to get bagged on. I think some guys bring it upon themselves. If you respect the game and hustle, everyone looks at you in a positive way."

It's amazing that some guys can't figure that out.

Slow start? The Birds have started a season 1-1 under Reid on six previous occasions. They finished 11-5 (2000), 11-5 (2001), 12-4 (2002), 6-10 (2005), 10-6 (2006) and 9-6-1 (last season). They made the playoffs - and won at least one playoff game - in all of those seasons but 2005.

Speedy Shane. Ari Kaplan, the Cal Tech-trained statistical analyst, big-league consultant and Webmaster (ariball.com), was asked by Yahoo Sports to analyze which teams and players are the best at going from first to third base on a single (with no one on second).

As of Friday, Kaplan found that the Angels lead the majors at 31.2 percent, meaning their runners got from first to third 84 times in 269 chances.

Baltimore was second at 30.5 percent (76 of 249 chances) and Colorado was third at 29.5 percent (54 of 183 chances).

Not surprisingly, the top two individuals were Angels: Chone Figgins went from first to third 52 percent of the time (26 of 50) without being thrown out, and that includes 4 of 11 advances on balls hit to left.

Teammate Erick Aybar was next at 50 percent with 20 advances in 40 chances.

Third in the majors was Shane Victorino at 38.5 percent (20 of 52).

Contact staff writer Don McKee at 215-854-4611 or

dmckee@phillynews.com.

This article contains information from the Associated Press.