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Bill Clinton feels the Cardinals' pain.

Well, at least the Bill Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock does. In a strange series of circumstances, 100 items from the team's Hall of Fame museum will take up residence in Arkansas from March 3 to Sept. 16. When it does, it will be the largest official display of Cardinals artifacts anywhere in the country, including downtown St. Louis and Missouri.

That doesn't make sense, does it? But it's sadly true because the Cardinals Hall of Fame museum, as Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, hasn't been anything more than a pile of boxes at Busch Stadium storage facilities since 2008. Before that, the museum had a home at the now-shuttered Bowling Hall of Fame that's located across the street from the stadium. Plans to relocate the museum to the the planned "Ballpark Village" have never come to fruition because, well, the Ballpark Village has yet to be built in this poor economy.

At any rate, with 16,000 items and 80,000 photographs just chilling in Busch's bowels, the Clinton library saw an opportunity to showcase things like jerseys that belonged to Arkansas native Dizzy Dean.

From the Post-Dispatch:

"I knew the collection was kind of available for a limited time because of it not having a home," said Kurt Senn, the (Clinton) library's deputy director. "As the closest major-league team and one people in this area knew through radio, we knew we had interest and a limited window to do this."

Added (Paula Homan, curator of the Cardinals Hall of Fame): "We've been able to provide the Clinton library with this quality of a loan primarily because my doors aren't open. I wouldn't be able to do something at this level if we had a hall."

Some might ask why the Cards just haven't moved back into the Bowling Hall of Fame visit until everyone gets their act together and builds something besides a softball field on the site of the proposed Ballpark Village. The team's response is that the bowling building is uninhabitable and that water leaks would damage the memorabilia.

After peering through the locked doors of the bowling museum during last October's World Series — and taking this picture — I can confirm the Cardinals' complaint.

Over the line!

In a perfect world, Cardinals ownership would take the money they saved by not saddling themselves with the Albert Pujols' contract and finally get this Ballpark Village built so Cardinals fans can see items like Bob Gibson's 1968 Cy Young award (which the club bought for $84,000).

But in the absence of that unlikelihood, the actions taken by the Cardinals curators are commendable. Faced with a lousy situation, they're not only getting some items out there for some Cardinals fans in the region to see but they've started an online museum with a virtual walkthrough. It's far from ideal, but at least it's something.

As long as they remember not to send a certain item down to the Clinton Library in Little Rock, of course. You can see where that'd get confusing.

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Over the past few weeks, only one question has been asked of me by every radio show that I've guested on.

Where will Bryce Harper start the year?

Indeed, the future of the 19-year-old Washington Nationals' phenom will continue to be a trending topic all spring long. And if I'm already being deluged with questions, I can't imagine what my pal Adam Kilgore, Nats' beat writer for the Washington Post, is going through.

On Friday, Kilgore made his early prediction while trying to predict what the Nats' 25-man roster will look like on opening day. His hunch? You better be willing to make the trip to Triple-A Syracuse if you want to see Harper in April and May.

Writes Kilgore:

Harper's presence on the Opening Day roster makes little sense from a development or business standpoint. Harper, 19, has never played at Class AAA and has less than 600 professional plate appearances. Also, by delaying his arrival until May, the Nationals can essentially promise an entire season of Harper at age 25 by sacrificing one month — the first month — of his age 19 production.

Indeed, that's pretty much the party line I've been spouting when asked the question and I don't consider it too much of a guess. The Nats aren't in "win now" mode, so even if Harper comes murdering the ball in spring training, he's not a must-have item for the first two months of the season. If you rewind the baseball blogosphere two years, you'd have seen the same things being written about Stephen Strasburg and he didn't reach the big leagues until the beginning of June.

Of course, this will spark a new round of questions on baseball's financial rules and the wisdom of putting teams in a position to manipulate roster time instead of introducing an exciting, young player to a fan base as early as possible.

But we'll cross that bridge when (and not if) we come to it.

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Pity the poor PR people who represent Robinson Cano. Despite putting up MVP-caliber numbers for the New York Yankees, the second baseman has an uphill battle in terms of Q rating. As long as Derek Jeter and A-Rod are kicking around the same infield, anyway.

But to his credit, the 2011 home run derby champ again moved the needle on his national profile quite a bit on Thursday night. At least among the soulless who dutifully tune into Jay Leno's nightly slopping of comedy gruel.

According to reports —  what, you think we actually watched? — Cano took on Denzel Washington in a Yankees trivia contest, eventually dropping a 6-5 decision to the actor.

From the NY Daily News:

In two of the questions he got right during the contest, he was part of the answer: Who are the last three Yankee All-Stars to wear jersey No. 24 (Cano, Tino Martinez and Rickey Henderson), and which current Yankees have fathers who played in the majors?

"Nick Swisher and myself," Cano said.

I'm actually pretty impressed that Cano knew the number question, though I'm guessing both Martinez and Henderson have both had opportunities to remind him about it.

NBC hasn't posted video of the contest yet, but you can go root around Hulu's full episode if you're interested in seeing the contest from start to finish.

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Have you chirped at Miami Marlins star Hanley Ramirez via his Twitter account for his lackadaiscal play? Have you told him you're tired of his me-first attitude over the past few years?

Well then congratulations! You may have inspired Hanley to finally shape up and, uh ... use your criticism to write a good commercial for a popular sports drink.

The Powerade ad is obviously in Spanish. A BLS source says the partial translation is this:

"To all of those who wrote to me criticizing me, sorry for not answering. I was busy with this bat and marker writing your names, the response is on the way.

"Sincerely, Hanley Ramirez"

So there you have it. If Ramirez comes out of the gate in 2012 mashing the ball, the presence of your Twitter handle on his sweetspot may have something to do with it.

If he struggles, well as one Stewie on Twitter said, he'll have to look into getting a bigger bat.

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Even as someone who falls ill at the sight of the winged wheel, I can admit that the 2013 Winter Classic is already on track to be one of the best. The Detroit Red Wings will face the Toronto Maple Leafs on New Year's Day in front of 115,000 people at the famed Michigan Stadium. The crowd might even be able to make some noise once they lift the Wolverine bluebloods out of the bowl and insert a Maple Leaf Nation that's more than ready to storm the border.

The really cool thing is that Red Wings (and Tigers) owner Mike Ilitch won't let Ann Arbor hog all the fun. It was officially announced on Thursday that Comerica Park will play host to a number of hockey games from the Winter Classic alumni game to the NCAA's annual Great Lakes Invitational to an American Hockey League contest. They even set up a rink outline so everyone can imagine what it will look like (though we had a pretty good idea already with Wrigley Field, Fenway Park and Citizens Bank Park hosting three of the five Winter Classics they've already held).

Judging from the nice weather, it actually looks like the Tigers could be out there playing right now instead of preparing to hit Lakeland in less than two weeks. But we're also excited to see some outdoor hockey on the downtown stadium campus.

And let's also be honest: Ilitch has to explore all the revenue streams that he can now that Prince Fielder is on the payroll.

More sports news from the Yahoo! Sports Minute:

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Jay Busbee and I have been doing the "Why Is This News?" podcast for quite some time now, but I don't think we've ever been stumped by a word used by one of our guests.

Well, until Wednesday's interview, that is. The word was "filiopietistic" — pertaining to reverence of forebears or tradition, especially if carried to excess — and pitcher Dirk Hayhurst was using it to talk about the way clubhouse culture stays the same from one generation to the next.

The word drop caught us off guard, but the man who used it did not. Hayhurst, author of the best-selling "The Bullpen Gospels" and the upcoming "Out Of My League," is one of the most intelligent ballplayers around. With an uncanny knack for being introspective about his long minor-league career and brief big league stint, Hayhurst made for a great 45-minute podcast and our first baseball-themed show of 2012.

You can download the show here (right-click and save the file to your desktop) or just listen to it through the Yahoo! media player located on the left side of the page. (We're having some uploading issues with iTunes, but are working to fix that soon.)

Among the topics we discuss with Dirk: • His upcoming adventure to Italy, where he'll spend 2012 playing pro ball. (Note: Dirk spent most of the discussion talking in his version of an Italian accent, just in case you were on the fence about investing 45 minutes into this show.)

• What it's really like to try and get to sleep the night before your first big league game.

• The process of writing "Out of My League," which focuses on his big-league promotion to the San Diego Padres in 2008.

• What it's like to watch Trevor Hoffman work up close.

• The controversial topic of Hayhurst's third book.

All in all, it was a total blast. We thank Hayhurst for both his time and for teaching us a new word. Follow him on Twitter at @TheGarfoose and keep tabs on him at dirkhayhurst.com.

More sports news from the Yahoo! Sports Minute:

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As a former pitcher who's remembered more for his famous nickname than his average talent, there are few things that Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd can do to grab the public's attention in the year 2012.

But saying that he used cocaine before "two-thirds" of his games with the Boston Red Sox, Montreal Expos and Texas Rangers is one of them.

Jonny Miller of WBZ NewsRadio out of Fort Myers, Fla. had the interview on Wednesday in which Boyd admitted that a little snow was more of a pregame routine than a bowl of Wheaties ever were.

"Oh yeah, at every ballpark," Boyd said. "There wasn't one ballpark that I probably didn't stay up all night, until four or five in the morning, and the same thing is still in your system. It's not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that.

"Some of the best games I've ever, ever pitched in the major leagues I stayed up all night; I'd say two-thirds of them. If I had went to bed, I would have won 150 ballgames in the time span that I played. I feel like my career was cut short for a lot of reasons, but I wasn't doing anything that hundreds of ball players weren't doing at the time; because that's how I learned it."

Boyd's autobiography "They Call Me Oil Can" is scheduled for release this summer, so it makes sense that he's stirring up headlines with something other than a claim he'd like to pitch in the bigs again. His claims are also believable. The era that he pitched — the 1980s — played host to number of cocaine controversies from Dwight Gooden to Steve Howe to the Pittsburgh Seven. Boyd says he was never drug tested, but that his teams threatened him with rehab. He says he didn't get the sympathy or help that other drug users like Darryl Strawberry and Gooden received because he was an outspoken black man. (As many have noted, Strawberry and Gooden's talent levels may have also had something to do with that.)

Boyd says he could have won twice the amount of games had he not battled a drug problem — he finished with a 78-77 career record with a 4.04 ERA over 10 seasons — but he also says he has no regrets. I find it interesting that most of us will probably react to this story in the same way as this wasn't a record breaker admitting to juicing or a burned-out phenom coming clean on the real reason he never lived up to the hype.

But because of that, this story might be sadder than both of those examples.

After all, "Oil Can Boyd did a lot of cocaine" is nothing more than a momentary blip on our Twitters, an excuse to fire off a smirky retort before shrugging our shoulders and moving onto the next thing. In reality, it sounds like Boyd's drug problem was just as serious as the one that Josh Hamilton has been battling in front of us the past few years. A number of factors — talent levels, time and, yes, race — will obscure that fact and make Boyd's addiction nothing more than a momentary curiosity.

But, really, they probably shouldn't.

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Admittedly it's a little weird to use a word like "dawn" when you're talking about a general manager that has held his position since 1998 and ranks among the most tenured front-office men in baseball.

But with Billy Beane reportedly finalizing an extension that would keep him running the Oakland Athletics through 2019, the media and fan buzz around the Bay Area has an optimistic bent. The thinking is that there's no way that Beane would sign on for that long if owner Lew Wolff wasn't close to securing his prized stadium deal over in San Jose.

Writes Susan Slusser in the SF Chronicle:

Such [a lengthy extension points] to further optimism in the A's upper ranks about the team's chances of getting approval for a new stadium in San Jose. Considering how publicly frustrated Beane has been about the limitations of the Coliseum, both in terms of attracting free agents and in terms of income generated, I cannot imagine him staying with the club that long without a good idea that a new stadium is on the horizon.

Indeed, with a new stadium in place, the thinking is that Wolff will end his tantrum and ease up on the financial death grip that led Beane to trade players like Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez and Andrew Bailey this offseason. A new home might not catapult the A's into large-market status but it should definitely stop the team from walking around with a tin cup while doing a lesser-publicized version of the retro Florida Marlins act.

Of course, with Beane's recent track record one wonders how fired up A's fans can really be about him sticking around for this entire decade. After all, the sheen of "Moneyball" exists only in the minds of Oscar voters and it's going to take a lot to make people forget about the misstep of trading Carlos Gonzalez for a half-season of Matt Holliday. Also, as SB Nation's Rob Neyer notes, Beane's 4 percent ownership stake means that he could be sticking around for more than just the removal of a competitive handicap.

Neyer also asks if this deal means that Beane will be an Athletic for life and I can't really see it meaning anything else. For better or worse, the on-field successes of Moneyball in the early 2000s — and Beane's ensuing rejection of the Red Sox — ensured a lengthy relationship between the two sides. Beane isn't going anywhere, nor should he be. It's impossible to separate the franchise from the architect at this point.

At the same time, I can't look at this deal and automatically assume that Billy Beane plus a bigger budget equals guaranteed success. The real victory of such an extension is that it signifies the franchise can stop spinning its wheels and finally get into a position where it can sink or swim. Beane and the A's could fail just as easily in a new home in San Jose, but at least it won't be the product of self-sabotage. It's a sad indictment of the past few years in Oakland, but that will count as progress.

It will count as a reason for hope.

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