By JIM ALEXANDER, The Press-Enterprise

Baseball crowned a world champion at Dodger Stadium Monday night.
Yes, I know. It's only March. But maybe it's time to re-think the designation that we customarily, and thoughtlessly, bestow on the team that wins the championship of North American professional baseball each October.

Shouldn't the Los Angeles Lakers be paying closer attention to detail right about now?
It is that peculiar time of the NBA year, of course. The playoffs are still a month away, somewhere out there in the ether, getting closer but not yet at the point where the urgency automatically ramps up.

For Darren Sproles, running with the football is the easy part. Talking about it? That's not something he looks forward to.

They're the worst 21-3 team in the history of professional basketball, at least according to the talk shows, bulletin boards and blogs and the over caffeinated, instant-gratification portion of their fan base.

There are some sports franchises that are so much a part of the fabric of their community that any sneeze or twinge or burp -- any imperfection, period -- becomes a civic crisis.
You could apply that description to a couple of dozen NFL franchises, definitely the Boston Red Sox in baseball, any Canadian hockey franchise ... and, needless to say, the Los Angeles Lakers.

This was supposed to be the classic fish-out-of-water scenario, as the puckish TV ad suggested. Joe Torre doing yoga? Riding a wave? Pitching a screenplay? Why, what's the quintessential New York guy doing in La-La Land, anyway? And how can he possibly function in such a laid-back environment? Quite effectively, it turned out.

CHICAGO -- The tone was set in the bottom of the first inning Thursday night. Alfonso Soriano spanked Chad Billingsley's first-pitch slider to left field for a single, energizing a cadre of Chicago Cubs faithful looking for any excuse to raise the roof and get their team back into the National League division series.

LOS ANGELES -- Manny Ramirez sat at his locker Thursday afternoon, holding court and savoring what must have been the weirdest pennant clinching he'd ever been part of. How often, after all, do you clinch your division seven hours or so before you can actually pop the champagne corks to celebrate it? "I found out from somebody in the elevator," he cracked.

Here are five quick changes to fix the baseball, our National Pastime: -- 1. One set of rules Either the American League should dump the DH, or the National League should embrace it. The idea of a World Series being decided on whose park, and whose rules, are being used is simply ridiculous.

LOS ANGELES -- Whether coach Rick Neuheisel likes it or not -- and he doesn't -- UCLA's football Bruins will have a low profile this week.