Spring means one thing: baseball

It’s spring.
Well, it is sometimes anyway. On some days skies are sunny and temperatures are around 70 degrees in the afternoon and a few hours later ice is falling from the sky.
But that’s just how weather works in the Midwest.
The calendar, at the very least, says it is spring. And that can mean only one thing — baseball.
The high school season in Ohio started Saturday. Major League Baseball — the professionals begin with a triple-header Sunday — and prep games in Indiana won’t be far behind.
So it’ll be a couple of baseball questions to lead off our session this month followed by a comparison of Indiana and Ohio athletics in the No. 3 spot.
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What’s your opinion on the Adam LaRoche situation?
—Jason McGraw,
Portland

For those who don’t know, the Chicago White Sox first baseman announced his retirement March 18 after the team asked him to limit the amount of time his 14-year-old son Drake was spending around the team.
I have two thoughts:
1) The White Sox are well within their rights to tell LaRoche his son does not belong in the clubhouse and dugout, or on the team plane.
2) LaRoche is well within his rights to walk away.
Let’s be clear though. While baseball is a game, it is also a job to those who play in the Major Leagues. And it’s a job for which they are well paid.
Plenty of construction workers, police officers and teachers would likely enjoy having their children around them at work. But that’s just not the reality of how our society works in most cases.
So while I support LaRoche’s choice to retire from baseball and to live his life and raise his children how he pleases, I scoff at him trying to turn his situation into some sort of crusade about family values.
Plenty of Americans hold their families dear but still have to leave them to go to work every day.
This strikes me not as a #FamilyFirst issue, as LaRoche tweeted, but rather as a #FirstWorldProblem.
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When you peer into your crystal ball what do you see in regard to the upcoming MLB season?
—Jeff Hatch, Dunkirk

If you paid attention to my NCAA men’s basketball tournament picks, you know my crystal ball is more like a shattered snow globe at this point. But I’ll peer into its shards and see what I can come up with.
Surprise team: Oakland Athletics — The A’s were one of the worst teams in baseball last season, but they were also quite unlucky, going 19-35 in one-run games. Sonny Gray had a strong 2015 and leads a pitching staff for which the top three starters are all 26 or younger.
AL MVP: Mike Trout — The obvious pick? Perhaps, given that he has finished first or second in the voting in each of the last four years. But how am I supposed to pass on a guy who has averaged 185 hits, 35 home runs, 99 RBIs and 28 stolen bases for 162 games over the course of his four-plus years in the Majors?
NL Cy Young: Madison Bumgarner — His walks per nine innings (1.6 in 2015) have been going down while his strikeouts per nine (9.6) are on the rise. He’s won 18 games in each of the last two seasons and there’s no reason to think he won’t be in that ballpark again.
World Series: Cleveland Indians over Chicago Cubs — Why, you ask? I say, why not? It’s OK to dream, isn’t it?
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What is the Indiana equivalent to the tournament rounds in Ohio high school sports? How does Ohio determine its divisions?
—Butch Gray, Portland

Like Indiana, Ohio has four tournament levels, but with different names — sectional, district, regional and state. Roughly, they line up with the Hoosier state’s sectional, regional, semi-state and state. But it’s not quite a perfect comparison.
Let’s use basketball as an example.
In Indiana, it takes two or three games to win a sectional title and two to win a regional. There are then single games at the semi-state and state levels.
For Ohio, it’s one or two games in the sectional, and then two each in the district, regional and state.
Divisions are also broken down in a similar, but not identical fashion. Both states use enrollment, but Ohio also separates the genders. Therefore, if a school has more girls than boys, or vice versa, its teams could be in different divisions.
This year, Fort Recovery’s female enrollment of 106 places in Division III, which includes schools ranging from 105 through 180 students. Meanwhile, the Indians’ male enrollment of 97 places them in Division IV, which includes schools with 108 students or fewer.