Glioblastoma is not a baseball term. It does not appear in The Dickson Baseball Dictionary between “gliding” (“a flaw in a pitcher’s delivery”) and “global draft” (“a proposed international draft”). However, if Paul Dickson does a fourth edition of the dictionary, he might want to consider including this strange word that has burst into our consciousness.

Glioblastoma is the name of the brain tumor Gary Carter has been found to have. Names of brain tumors are as unintelligible as names of steroids. The people who deal with them know them and can distinguish one from another, but it’s not for the layman.

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If April showers bring May flowers, Arizona’s horticulturists would be fortunate to do as well as Arizona’s Diamondbacks.

The Diamondbacks, who finished last in the National League West each of the last two years, were perilously near that unwelcome spot at the end of the first month of this season. Only the San Diego Padres stood between the Diamondbacks and their familiar position.

And then, suddenly, Kirk Gibson’s players blossomed.

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The appropriate way to begin a column about a series of interviews with baseball Hall of Famers would probably be to name the players Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner, interviewed for his oral history project, which became three books and a 13-part half-hour television series, “The Boys in the Hall,” that will run on Fox Sports Networks from May 29 through Aug. 21.

Vincent set out to get older players on tape while he still could.

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