31.   Despite much better overall mound work than expected, the Rangers have lost four of five games to open the season.

32.   Fair Grounds opens its season on Thanksgiving Day.

33.   Finally, the issue was resolved on a flight home from Japan, where Houston and Seattle opened the season.

34.   Fittingly, four Olympians will be on the ice when Harvard opens its season this week at the University of Minnesota.

35.   From there, he went to spring training and then opened the season.

36.   Grambling opens its season this afternoon against Alcorn State University, its bitter nemesis in the mountains of Mississippi.

37.   He did not look like someone ready to open the season.

38.   He opened the season with sore feet caused by new athletic insoles, developed bone spurs in his right foot, then was felled by the flu.

39.   He threw for the first time since Friday, when he made the second of his two stunningly miserable starts to open the season.

40.   He opened the season with minor-league Long Beach and was the leading scorer in the International Hockey League at the time of his recall.