We've already linked to Thomas Boswell's first-day-of-spring training column elsewhere on this site, but if you haven't read it, it's worth checking out just for the exchange that Boz uses to lead off the piece.
Pitching coach Steve McCatty bumped into Wilson Ramos, jostling him sideways, as they passed in a narrow clubhouse corridor here on Monday as the Washington Nationals pitchers and catchers reported to spring training.
"So, how was your winter?" asked McCatty. "Anything goin' on?"
Ramos stood stunned, blank-faced and speechless - totally fooled for a blink. Then infielder Andres Blanco started cracking up. "I see, I see," said a laughing Ramos, who was kidnapped in November, held captive in a Venezuelan mountain shack for two days and freed after a gun battle.
McCatty's day will come. No baseball gag goes unsettled.
That's right, folks. Kidnapping jokes are apparently fair game, as long as you're a senior member of the Nats coaching staff.
As an aside, we were overseas when news of the Ramos kidnapping broke. Mind you, the ending to that story was downright uplifting compared to the other major story that broke around that time.