The tinier half of the Reds' dynamic duo of catchers will be late to spring training this season as he awaits the imminent birth of his second child, according to a subhead way down at the bottom of the story Room with a View for Castellini in the Cincinnati Post.

DUE ANY DAY - Backup catcher Javier Valentin will not report with the rest of his fellow receivers today, but his absence has been excused.

Valentin's wife, Ingrid, is due to give birth to the couple's second child at any time. If the birth doesn't occur naturally by today, they probably will induce labor so Valentin can make his way to Florida from Puerto Rico by Saturday or Sunday.

Just think: someday that kid will tell people about how the doctors broke mom's water so that pop could give him or her a kiss before heading off to spring training. How would you like to be able to claim a baseball story like that? As if it wouldn't already be cool enough to have the Latin Love Machine for a father!

So the new guys have their numbers:

• Rick White, 00
• Bench coach Bucky Dent, 7
• Frank Menechino, 16
• Scott Hatteberg, 21
• Quinton McCracken, 30
• Grant Balfour, 36
• Michael Gosling, 48
• Dave Williams, 52
• Mike Burns, 53
• Justin Germano, 57
• Homer Bailey, 74
• Tuffy Rhodes, 83

I really didn't think they'd hand out #21 to anyone this season. But they gave it to Hatteberg, the new cute-as-a-button first baseman who's lacking that traditional first baseman power. Maybe they just got confused.

As usual, many thanks to Marc Lancaster's spring training blog for the heads-up.

A photo of Homer Bailey appears in the Enquirer web edition today. And it's a doozy.

Of course, you can take a freaky-looking picture of anyone, especially during a moment of physical exertion. Obviously making fun of these quick-exposure, mid-pitch photos isn't exactly fair.

But it is kind of fun.

UPDATE: As long as we're talking about photos, check out this one of Paul Wilson gettin' some sugar. It's a little gratification for your inner voyeur.

Sounds like priority one for Ryan Freel upon the arrival of the Cincinnati media to Sarasota was to explain about his arrest last month. On Marc's blog he's quoted saying that he was just trying to break up an altercation between two guys he knew, one of whom being an employee of the pool/sushi joint where he was attending a bachelor party:

“It was so stupid,” he said. “Here I was, trying to get somebody out of trouble, yelling at him – this is my buddy – and all of a sudden I go to jail. I wasn’t fighting, I wasn’t doing anything.”

In the Enquirer he goes so far as to say that he was targeted because of his celebrity status:

Finally, the (officer) arrested me. I think he knew who I was.”

Which begs the question: if the officer already knew who he was, then who was he trying to fool when his listed himself as unemployed on the police report? Marc has said he'll investigate.

But the poor guy's been embarrassed enough. You know there are plenty of folks out there who are very judgmental of these arrests and who will give him a hard time. There are at least a handful who won't want their kids to try to get his autograph because of them.

Small consolation, I suppose, but not everyone really cares. At least some of us just would have loved to have been there for the party.

At the same time the Reds were signing Quinton McCracken to a minor league deal, they were also giving Tuffy Rhodes the minor league treatment:

Rhodes has been playing in Japan since 1996 and in 2001, he tied Sadaharu Oh's Japanese single-season record with 55 home runs. From 1990-95, the 37-year-old played for the Astros, Cubs and Red Sox.

A Cincinnati native, Rhodes graduated from Western Hills High School in 1986.

Um, I'm running out of smart alec things to say about old guys signing with this organization. At this rate, though, the Bats will be routinely calling their big-league counterparts “champ” and “sonny” and offering them a quarter to go fetch the sports section out from under grandma's knitting basket.