Staying at the Mayflower

I will say this: the Marlins do everything colorfully even in their choice of hotels.

Hanley Ramirez, the Marlins' star shortstop, stepped outside the team hotel on his way to lunch when a tour bus screeched to a sudden stop on Connecticut Avenue.

Pressed against the windows, dozens of passengers aimed their cameras and snapped away. But they weren't photographing Ramirez. They were shooting the hotel's stately entrance with its famous sign - The Mayflower.

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Few players were amused.

"I can't believe a tour bus would stop because that's where the governor did his thing,'' pitcher Scott Olsen said. "You have the White House and the monuments and the Capitol, and they stop at the Mayflower? That's ridiculous."

Catcher Matt Treanor joked that he was staying in the room where Spitzer's alleged $4,300 tryst took place. Treanor actually was staying one floor below. Room 871 is temporarily off-limits, according to a desk clerk who did not want to be named, because visitors were knocking on the door and disturbing guests.

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A few doors down from Treanor's room, another former New York governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, penned his famous "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" speech for his first inaugural address in March 1933.

Motel 6, it is not.