What was this breaking news? An earthquake? A fiscal crisis spurred by some action or inaction by the state general assembly? Unrest in Los Angeles or San Francisco or Oakland?

No, it was more important than that. Apparently Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver are separating.

Who says hard-hitting TV news is dead?

The Pirates haven’t been over .500 past the first week of the season in seven years, when they last topped .500 on May 29, 2004.

That’s how bad it’s been for the Pirates, whose fans have had nothing to cheer about since Francisco Cabrera’s two-RBI single in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS. No winning seasons, just life as an also-ran for 19 seasons. In the 21 seasons prior, Pittsburgh won two World Series and six division titles. Pittsburgh’s a football town, sure, but baseball ran a close second.

These days, it’s not so much a baseball town unless locals are discussing Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente or Bill Mazeroski. It’s a shame, and I HATED the Pirates in their heyday of the early 1990s.

Baseball has some problems, and as tough as it is for small-to-medium market teams to be competitive, it’s not unheard of. Kansas City and Cleveland are enjoying a nice start, and Cleveland, Minnesota, Detroit, Atlanta, San Diego, Oakland, Seattle, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee have all enjoyed runs of at least a little sustained success.

It’s management that screws it up in Pittsburgh. They haven’t had a good ownership situation in some time, and while they have developed some of the league’s better players, they don’t hold onto them long enough to get any dividends out of them.

Improvement is incremental, but decline seems to be exponential until you hit bottom. One thing cascades into another into another, and soon you are the Pittsburgh Pirates. Or the KC Royals. Or the Cubs.

19 seasons of futility is pretty bad, though.

However, I own an Android device (a Motorola Droid X, which is excellent, by the way), and I read that my locations are probably also known to Sergey Brin at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Cal.

I didn’t sign up to have my movements tracked and stored. Worse yet, the government now knows these databases exist. How long until the government talks Google into handing over the information.

Disgraceful.

Major League Baseball has moved to seize control of the Dodgers, a famed franchise that fans and much of the baseball world had come to see as crippled by an owner who does not appear to have enough money to operate the team.

A lot of employees will be hurt in this spectacle. And by employees, I do not mean Andre Ethier. The 9-to-5ers for the Dodgers (ticket sales, customer relations, etc., etc.) will have some sleepless nights as this mess gets sorted.

I suppose when ownership is at 50-50, you need to make it work out somehow, or be a selfish ass and screw everyone else, even when you say you care about them out of the other side of your mouth.

And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through

A lot’s been on my mind lately. To me, one who does not keep trusted friends’ counsel, who does not outwardly show any interest in learning from any outside force, who asserts his or her leadership prowess simply by pointing out the shortcomings he or she perceives in others, and who chooses no solution over acknowledging that there’s a problem is no leader, and really is just one step from dead.

I’ve witnessed someone, who in 15 short years went from being a young man who carried a bit of an aura about him to becoming a bitter old man with no original ideas. He has become a man who measures achievement and accomplishment by “activity.”

Anyway, the time’s come to bury the remnants of an old friend who passed 11-plus years ago. Now that was a leader.

Why do we live here?

Leake is 2-0 so far this year for the Reds, but the news out of Cincy makes me wonder what his future will be.

Leake stole six shirts from Macy’s. The value of the shirts was less than $60.00. Leake makes $425,000, which makes him a relative pauper in the Major Leagues, but quite comfortable in this country.

Since the first bonus baby was signed, we’ve heard of pitchers with “Million Dollar Arms and Ten Cent Heads.” They get the tag for different reasons.

Take a look at another pitcher, a right-hander who as far I know is not a felon. Jake Peavy has been on the comeback trail since last year’s gruesome injury. He pitched lights out in spring training and then admitted he felt some shoulder discomfort all along. The White Sox put him on the disabled list and had him continue to rehab in Arizona before sending him on a few rehab stints in the minors.

His first two starts went swimmingly. He pitched well, and he reported no disomfort.

His third start was tonight. Peavy didn’t last 15 pitches. Shoulder discomfort. While I know that Peavy desperately wants to return to the Major League mound, he hasn’t done himself any favors by being less than honest with the Sox trainers. For his sake, I hope his $0.10 head doesn’t devalue his $10 million arm.

However, the whole scenario sucks.

The Bulls won 62 games in the regular season, yet they have to screw around with a team that finished 25 games behind them during an 82-game season?

I suppose it’s a reward to the Bulls, who would rather spend the first round playing a near-lottery team than anyone else. But why not a bye? Should the Pacers win a seven-game series, what does it day about the integrity of the NBA regular season?

The NBA and NHL are the biggest offenders by allowing 16 teams. But the NFL’s system allowed a 7-9 team (Seattle) to make the playoffs last year. And they won a playoff game, beating the defending Super Bowl champs.

In baseball, a wild card team can beat the champion from its own division in the league championship series. Then again, baseball’s schedule has enough problems with balance.

The regular season should mean something — enough that a team that has proven itself so bad should not get an equal chance at beating a 60-win team in a playoff series.

I know why they do this. Same reason as they do anything else: money. So, if they want to keep the expanded playoffs, how about this modest proposal:

If the difference in seeds is more than three, then the better team needs to win just three. The team with the worse seed needs to win four.

After watching last night’s episode stumble through without putting any of Ferrell’s strengths on display, nor giving the audience any sustained laughs, I can’t help but ask: why continue the series?

What other things will The Office cover in lampooning office life and tying together a story going into its eighth season? The company has been sold and now sells a totally different flagship product. Jim and Pam got married and had a child. The Dwight Schrute-Angela storyline has played out. What other stories can the show possibly tell, and how can it do it without getting so outrageous that it barely resembles the mundane ridiculousness of office life many of us can relate to?

If the writers can answer that question, great. I’ll give them a shot, but a series that produces episodes simply because it hasn’t yet been canceled but has nothing to offer the audience is as embarrassing as WIllie Mays stumbling in the outfield for the Mets. At least Mays got a game-winning hit in the 1973 World Series (he lined a base hit up through the box off of Rollie Fingers in the 12th inning of Game 2; bet you didn’t know that).

• The ability to force involuntary payment to me.
• The ability to print money