Coming next week : Donald Sterling – Misunderstood Scumbag or An Acceptable Alternative To James Dolan? But for now, we’ll have to settle for a profile of Royals president Daniel Glass, who as the KC Star’s Bill Reiter explains, “uses words like ‘cool’ and ‘dude’. He’s nervous on a first meeting and wickedly funny on a second. He wears nice clothes that aren’t quite fancy enough to mark him a rich man, and he eats at a Subway that shares space with a gas station even though he lives in a million-dollar mansion.”

He sounds a lot like me, really. Except for the parts about being funny on a second meeting and living in a million-dollar mansion. Oh, and the nice clothes. And Subway. Can’t fucking stand that place. But other than that, this was like reading about myself.

Dan Glass sits at a conference table and talks about the criticisms that have been leveled at him and his family.

“I always look at it as it’s a lack of talent on their part to take a cheap shot here and there,” he said.

Then, after a pause and some thought:  “Another cliche, but you’re never as good as people say you are and you’re never as bad as people say you are,” he said. “I hear about it. I used to (hear) it. I (hear) it still to some degree. It’s hard to take it serious.”

But the image that’s been painted of him has become so widespread, it makes friends and family bristle. They’ve heard it all before, though they don’t understand where it’s come from.

He gets a bad rap sometimes for not knowing anything about baseball or just being the owner’s son “whatever people say” but it’s not true, said his 25-year-old son, Dayne. “They don’t know him. They think he’s just hiding away. But he’s not. He’s just private; that’s his style.”

Dan Glass strolls into a broadcast booth for a photo shoot, trying to smile.

“Ah, the price of fame,” he quips.

He’ll be heading to spring training soon, and, as the photographer snaps pictures, you can see in Glass’ eyes that he’d rather be anywhere else in the world than here, having his photo taken, another moment that’ll thrust him back under that spotlight.

He leans back toward the open window with the steep drop that looks out over the diamond. His lips purse together. He’s polite but impatient.

“Move your hand back,”the photographer says.

Glass smiles. “Like I’m about to jump out of here?”

Mets pitching guru Rick Peterson is the subject of David Lennon’s Monday entry at Newsday, and The Jacket’s taste in cinema leans, typically enough, towards Judy Garland.

“One of the greatest movies of all time is ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ What a great story,” Peterson said. “If you take a look at all the pitchers with untapped potential, I tell them that they are one of those three characters. It’s in there, and you don’t have to take all the time traveling down the road to get to it.”

“I’m a big ‘Seinfeld’ fan,” Peterson said. “I told him that his show actually is very helpful to be a better communicator with these guys. Because when you use the things he talks about, they laugh about it. There’s a human element to it, and once you get someone to laugh, you can exhale and see things a different way.”

Peterson has yet to break out a puffy shirt as a prop. But getting his pitchers to step outside their own heads for a few moments, and forget the ball and glove, can be a useful tool on the mound.

“He did one last year when I was pitching a side session,” John Maine said. “He asked me, ‘Do you like ice cream?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ Then he said, ‘Do you like ketchup?’ And I said, ‘Um, yeah.’ Then he asked me, ‘Would you put ketchup on top of the ice cream?’ When I said no, he told me, ‘Well, that’s what you’re doing right now.’

Lennon’s colleague Bob Herzog reports the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League have acquired former Met Edgardo Alfonso. While I’m thrilled to learn Fonzie will be wearing the colors made famous by John Rocker, Pete Rose III and Bill Pulsipher, it does seem like the Jersey City Snakes let a coveted free agent slip thru their fingers yet again.