In the sales pitch on his personal Web site, Canseco points out that "Only two players have been able to accomplish this since, Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds."

Quite a club. Canseco, Rodriguez and Bonds will someday be viewed as the Murderers Row of the Dead Balls Era™. (Get used to it!)

Perhaps these items have been on sale for some time, or Canseco's not a student of the game: Ex-Nat Alfonso Soriano pledged the 40/40 frat in 2006.

BTW: The asking price for Canseco's detritus is $9,995.00.

As luck would have it, the W.T. Woodson grad and Auburn University star signed a contract with the Texas Rangers and left the Cape to mere hours before game time to start his pro career.

But while I was at the game and talking with locals about the Kettleers' history, more than one fan mentioned that Bill Richardson, the current New Mexico governor and burgeoning scandal magnet, was on the team in the 1960s.

Richardson, I was told, was so good that he'd been drafted by the Kansas City Athletics.

I'm no scout, and had never seen Richardson, who I was told still hangs out in Cotuit in the summer and catches Kettleers games, perform in anything other than street clothes. But I can't say the guy ever struck me as pro athlete material.

But I Googled him when I got home and found references to Richardson's being picked by the A's and being headed for the Majors before injuries derailed his baseball dreams and sent him into a political career.

In one profile about his days playing with Cotuit, Richardson uses the old "boast-disguised-as-self-deprecation" tool that all good politicians have at the ready, treating the interviewer for a small New England publication to a remembrance of the time that future New York Yankees great Thurman Munson jacked a monster home run off him during a Cape Cod League game.

Well, Richardson's been in the headlines lately for an investigation into allegedly peddling his influence for campaign contributions.

And if nothing else comes out of the inquiry, my lack of faith in the politico's athletic potential has already been confirmed: Richardson, amid the blood-in-the-water convergence of media types since he withdrew his name from consideration for a cabinet post in the Obama administration, has been forced to admit that the baseball draft portion of his bio is phony.

An investigation into Richardson's baseball claims by the Albuquerque Journal uncovered that the only source for all the A's stories was the governor himself.

When confronted with the fact that no evidence to confirm his oft-told tale exists, Richardson gave as pathetic a confession as possible: "After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter," he said, "I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's."

(Munson died in a plane crash in 1979, so he isn't around to say Richardson never really served him a gopher ball all those years ago on the Cape. Pity.)

Briefly back to Cotuit guys who really were drafted by Major League teams: After leaving the Kettleers in July, Bianucci hit .316 in 31 games with a Rangers rookie league affiliate in Spokane, Wash.

He keeps that up, and he'll never be a governor.

Monday night, he tried on his provocateur hat, telling his Monday Night Football audience that the Dallas Cowboys had surpassed the New York Yankees in world domination/sports tradition.

Absurd.

One great thing about sports is that there are such things as records. Numbers. Stats. And they all point to the Yanks on this one, Tony. Good thing I never bothered to buy cable.