One of the better ideas Canada's new independent pro league had was to sign players to contracts before assigning them to teams. The playing field must be level when your entire regular season is against just three other teams in your division. Yesterday, the CBL announced its rosters, and all teams are still looking for free agent talent.

I'm a skeptic. I don't think the CBL will play noticeably better ball than the Intercounty League, though we'll miss Rich Butler and Gamin Teague at the Pits this year. The Sunday night TV games (shown on The Score, a poor substitute for Jon and Joe and the ESPN featured game) could help create interest. I'm not rooting for the league to fail; quite the contrary -- I'm happy for the sprinkling of Canadians who get a chance to play, and there's never too much baseball. The first year will be understandably rocky, and the CBL will require more teams to survive, but the talent pool is shallow already, and unless all the local marketing efforts are superb, the investors will need deep pockets.

Before anyone jokes about the Royales outdrawing the local NL club, it ain't gonna happen. The barnstorming Montreal CBL team, like Los Expos, is playing its "home" games all over the place -- Sherbrooke, and a bunch of TBAs. I don't understand why they're not based at Parc Jarry.