Advocates of maintaining a baseball field in Providence's Armory District -- the historic base of baseball in Providence -- plan to agitate this evening at 6:30, at the park-turned-dog walk. Good luck to them. I like dogs, but Rhode Island's capital needs more ball fields, not less.

N4N is quite pumped for the formal start of his softball season tonight.

While Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and others were writing the new journalism of America in the early 1960s, David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan offered the early warning call, just by reporting the facts, about the US misadventure in Vietnam. As has become legend, White House officials tried to get Halberstam reassigned from his beat at the New York Times because of the unpleasant details of what he was reporting.

Having been away for a week, N4N will ease back into the blogosphere by bringing attention to two pieces from last week's Phoenix.

Brian C. Jones offered a characteristically astute take on the big picture crossroads facing Rhode Island as it faces a serious budget deficit.

On a lighter note, I wrote about how Erica Sagrans, a former Phoenix and RI Future contributor, isn't the only staffer in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office with a Rhode Island link.

It's time for the annual Best issue of the Providence Phoenix. The highlights include readers' picks for the best the state can offer in arts and entertainment, city life, shopping, a host of editors' picks, and more. One of my favorite parts of this issue is the recognition of Local Heroes who are making a positive difference in Rhode Island.

Mark Arsenault, a talented writer himself, breaks the news in today's ProJo of how Steve Laffey, former maximum leader of Cranston-turned-US Senate hopeful, plans to amplify his message and take various people to task in a forthcoming book. As others have surmised, this seems like a useful foundation for Laffey's next political adventure, perhaps a gubernatorial run in 2010.

A Georgia man outraged by the Providence Journal's decision to stop its longtime sponsorship of the Rhode Island Statewide Spelling Bee has created a Web site calling for a boycott of Rhode Island's statewide daily. By so doing, he hopes to cost the paper $10,000 -- about twice the amount of the annual sponsorship.

Billy Kramer, who lives in Atlanta and publishes a Web site about high school sports in Georgia, learned of the ProJo's sponsorship withdrawal when he read an April 4 story in USA Today

News-hungry wretch that I am, N4N ventured out to the local Cumby's yesterday to secure a Providence Sunday Journal after experiencing the problems described in the previous post. It was a good thing that I did, for the ProJo ran off its second consecutive strong Sunday paper in two weeks.

For my money, the best and most enterprising piece was Karen Lee Ziner's tough story about the troubled history of "Carmelo Kercado, the federal government's inspector at the New Bedford factory that was raided last month .

A familiar dichotomy plays out on very rainy days at the N4N manse: the delivery of a moist, if not sopping wet, ProJo, along with a pleasantly dry New York Times.

How does the Times do it? They put two plastic bags on the paper, rather than just one, and from two different directions, creating an effective seal. Simple.

Why doesn't the ProJo do this? I imagine I'm not alone in getting a wet paper, and it's not as if readers need more encouragement to ditch the print subscription and read the paper online instead.

Sox fans accustomed to watching games on NESN with Don and Jerry generally dread those occasions when Fox has the rights for a weekend game. Tim McCarver (who used to be pretty good, a long time back) and his crewmates offered more grist for the mill with their coverage of Saturday's Sox-Angels contest:

1. We all know how Manny Ramirez has for years made periodic great plays in the outfield while occasionally muffing some easy chances.

Dan Barbarisi last week broke the news of how former Linc Chafee aide Deb Brayton is joining the staff of Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, as his deputy chief of staff. Combined with the recent crossover to the mayor's staff of Ani Haroian, previously a top aide and political adviser to Attorney General Patrick Lynch, this suggests some savvy foundation-building for a gubernatorial run by Cicilline.

Loving baseball means recognizing its flaws.

It's difficult to imagine the intestinal fortitude displayed by Jackie Robinson when he made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, and thereafter, while facing outright hostility and worse from fans, opposing players, and others. He was a true profile in courage, and it cost him, in terms of the stress that helped to cause his death as a relatively young man.

Like any press secretary worth her salt, Alex Swartsel knows how to spread the good news. Here's a sunny report on her boss, US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, from today's Washington Post.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was getting needled by his peers from the moment he walked into his first meeting of Judiciary Committee Democrats in early January.