OK, so I’m a softy – at least when it comes to baseball.

I cried at the end of “A League of their Own” even though Tom Hanks’ character said, “There’s no crying in baseball.”

I was happy enough to burst at the end of “The Natural.” The exploding lights make my heart skip a few beats.

Every time I see a reference to the movie “American Pie,” I sigh and think about how Henry Rowengartner from “Rookie of the Year” is all grown up.

But soon the movie emotion won’t cut it.

Major League Baseball returns next week and it’s about time. What a great way to get away from busted brackets, all the madness of March and the Iraq conflict.

Baseball movies such as “Eight Men Out,” “The Rookie” and HBO’s “61” make for great watching this weekend and set the tone for what should be a great baseball season no matter which side of Chicago you cheer for or if you’re from The Lou and you’re proud.

After watching these classics, head outside and enjoy the weather at Williams Field and Coaches’ Stadium where the Panther baseball and softball teams are in action. Grab the grill and fire it up out there.

Few better ways to blast out the winter blahs exist.

u The Panther football team’s hiring of defensive backs coach Noah Joseph shows great intelligence on many levels. From a headline writers’ standpoint, both Noah and Joseph are great headline names, biblical even. It’s like a double word score in Scrabble.

But seriously, Eastern gets a well-traveled coach who might be only a couple years older than some of the players on the team.

The road from Iowa State, his most recent job, should be paved with more than corn as Joseph’s track record shows.

Panther coach Bob Spoo said Iowa State runs a similar system to Eastern and was one of the main reasons he received the job.

“We were getting so close to spring practices that we wanted to bring someone in who wouldn’t need a whole lot of training,” Spoo said. “We had to go with someone who had the familiarity with it.”

With a young offense and a defense that showed many lapses this year, Joseph will be worthy of more than a Technicolor dreamcoat if he can provide many of the ingredients that would cure the Panthers ailing defense.

u Another figure skating scandal rocked the sport again, stop the presses! Michelle Kwan’s victory over Sasha Cohen in the first of two qualifying groups at the world championships in Washington was controversial.

How legitimate could a sport possibly be if the entire outcome would be determined by judges. Figure skating is followed by millions, but it’s a competitive sport, not American Idol.

The only real solution would be a figure skating BCS points system, similar to the one in college football. Only then would we be able to know who is the best skater in the land.