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Baseball is back on the radio.

We’re told spring is just around the corner.

And I’ve learned that I might be related to the late John Hassler, a Minnesota school teacher turned author. Hassler is known in literary coast-to-coast; I’m known largely in the heart of the Red River Valley, a 50-mile radius at best. The common denominator here: we’re both originally from Minnesota.

In fact, John taught school at Fosston. My grandmother grew up near Fosston. 

That’s close enough for me.

Hey, if Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie are distant cousins, anything is possible. Consider cousins Rush Limbagh and Harry Reed. Could Howard Dean and Scott Hennen be cousins?

Good grief.

Next thing you know, they’ll be telling us that Mother Teresa and Charlie Manson are related.

Suicidal thoughts are no doubt being upgraded, dismissed or simply put on hold since the news of what genealogists are uncovering under family trees.

Like I said, anything is possible. They’ve linked Hillary with Madonna and Celine Dion and Barack Obama with actor Brad Pitt and President George W. Bush.

Cousins, all.

Barack and George W. are 10th cousins, once removed, according to the surfacing genealogy experts.

Strange bed fellows, for sure.

That said, the news out of New England could be downright disturbing. The researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society are asking for trouble, the way I see it.

Guys are going to be finding out that they slept with their cousins and didn’t know it.

Women will discover they’ve been in love with a cousin and didn’t know it.

Husband and wife will turn to one another and scream: WE’RE COUSINS?

The whole damn country is related.

I’ve suspected as much in some of the towns I’ve lived in, but now I guess its possibly fact.

Good Lord.

Mother Teresa can forgive Charlie Manson because they’re cousins, after all.

Obama will wonder if he isn’t really a Republican.

Hold it. We’ve just had some breaking news. The Smothers Brothers weren’t really brothers, they were first cousins.

The news of different family ties will turn this country upside down, mark my words.

What do you think Ed Schultz, Democratic mouth piece, is going to say when he learns he’s a distant cousin of Laura Ingraham, a shrill of the Conservative Right.

“No kidding?”

Hardly.

No, Fast Eddy will say something like, “Holy cow. We’ll have to include Armageddon in the political discourse.”

You can imagine David Letterman’s surprise when he was told Idaho Sen. Larry Craig was his cousin.

The family tree was etched on the wall of an air terminal bathroom stall, much to Letterman’s dismay.

Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Besides obvious family ties and common aunts and uncles, etc., researchers in New England are undercovering many similarities between the newly-discovered cousin connections.

Mike Huckabee is proudly telling how he and Evel Knievel were cousins.

“We both lived in the fast lane,” says Huckabee.

Fargo mayor Dennis Walaker just found out he’s a cousin of former New York City mayor Rudy Giulani.

“Better Rudy than Eliot Spitzer,” Walaker is telling friends and family.

Cousins Larry King and Chris Matthews now want to share a TV talk show.

But Jessica Simpson wants nothing to do with O.J. Simpson. And Martha Stewart is claiming “no, no, no, no, no” to the rumor that she and Emeril Lagasse are cousins.

Humorist Garrison Keillor finds humor in the fact that he and Al Gore are cousins.

“It had to have happened when the ice melted in the dead of winter on Lake Woebegon.” Where all the children are handsome, blond, above average and cousins.