In other happy news, Mike Bordick is down in Dunedin serving as a guest coach for the infielders.

Apparently there's a weather delay.

That's great news about Bordick, Mike, thanks for sharing.

Cold, raining since morning, field in terrible shape. The game has been totally cancelled and will not be made up, according to Wilner on the Fan just now.

They're just saving it all up for television tomorrow night.

Who is doing color commentary for Sportsnet this season?

Jamie Campell and ???

I don't think it's been announced yet. Sportsnet is supposed to be releasing the TV schedule today, maybe they'll tell us then. Or maybe they don't know yet.

Ryan, I believe it's the Candyman, Tom Candiotti doing most of the games, which (and I mean no offense to him) I am not looking overly forward to.

The Tigers (Lakeland) and Devil Rays (St. Pete) have also cancelled their games for today because of the rain. Over in Jupiter where they sold out the place and the Red Sox drove all the way over from Ft. Myers, they are holding in a delay/ The rain over there has just about stopped, and they are examining the field now.

Cambell and Candy? Oh no!

Why do we have to suffer through so many bad broadcast teams?

Rob Faulds, althought he tried hard, wasn't very good. His voice is boring and he lacked a lot of baseball knowledge. John Cerutti, may he rest in peace, was weak while with CBC but really came on strong the last two years with Sportsnet. I thought he improved a lot and was really coming into form.

Why couldn't someone at Sportsnet give Buck Martinez a call? I'm sure he isn't doing that much right now and he and Dan Scholmen were the best Jays broadcast team I ever listened to . Scholmen now does Cubs games for ESPN, that's how good he is.

I think I might have to listen to the radio with the t.v on mute this season.

Isn't Buck Martinez part of the Orioles broadcasting team?

I think so Pepper, he's also still got quite a chip on his shoulder about the managerial thing. I highly doubt he wants anything to do with the JP-era Jays.

Either way, I think its a bit of bad policy to bring back the old coach to be the analyst.

Especially when the team and network are owned by the same people.

Dan Schulman was amazing though. I love listening to him on Sunday night baseball.

We could get Brian Williams though maybe :p

It's started to rain again - harder than before in Jupiter - still in a rain delay at the Marlins...

The Yankees game in Winter Haven vs. the Indians has been cancelled. It was the Indians only sellout, so the people there must be pi__ed. So it will be Pavano vs. Chacin tomorrow night at Legends Field. For those of you who can get the YES Network, the game will be televised there starting at 7 pm tomorrow night.

Who is doing color commentary for Sportsnet this season?

I think they are doing a rotation of Candiotti, Darrin Fletcher and Rance Mulliniks. I'm not really excited about any one of those three, but hey, atleast it's not Joe Carter.

So am I the only one that liked Candiotti as colour? Sure, he may fall on the Joe Carter side of the language spectrum, but I found his insights and commentary pretty good.

I'm glad to hear that the Jays are keeping Bordick in the fold too. He'd make a great coach some day; and this sort of contact only makes that easier in the long run,

So am I the only one that liked Candiotti as colour?

Nope, not the only one. I think he's solid too.

Put me in the Candy camp, his insights were delivered low key but if you listened carefully they were good.

If Candy is indeed back this season, it will be an opportunity to evaluate how good he is.

I think he sounded good because he didn't stutter over every third word like Cerutti (bless his dearly departed soul). Candy delivers good insight with smooth delivery.

I enjoy Candy's work. He does a excellent job of breaking down the pitches and game situations.

The only knock I have on him was that he was part of some D List celeb website where you could pay a certain amount to talk to him over the phone.

I too am pro Candiotti, though his use of "good" in place of "well" -- as in "he pitched good" -- drives me crazy. But in terms of analysis he was much better than JC. Much as JC was a nice guy, he added very little insight to his broadcasts.

Mark me down as another Candiotti fan -- he often sounded like he was having a lot of fun, and he could explain things in a way that I always understood exactly what he was talking about. His timing in that respect was good, too: he'd say "watch out for this" and then it would happen pretty quickly afterwards. So he had a good read on the game.

Just colour me glad they didn't hire Chris Cuthbert.
I have NO idea why he has such a great reputation.
I think he's absolutely awful.

Campbell is an awful choice.

I do like the Candy man quite a bit, too.

Quick Hijack: at www.minorleagueball.com, John Sickels grades and ranks the top 20 Jays prospects today. League and Purcey head the list with B+s. Like others' opinions of the Jays farm system, Sickels finds a lot of depth with little star power. Of the 24 farm systems ranked thus far, the Jays were only the 8th team not to have a grade lower than C+ amongst their top 20. However, 15 of the 24 organizations had at least one prospect with an A or A- grade. The Jays, incidentally have the highest average GPA amongst teams with no A or A- player and, of the 24 organizations ranked thus far, are 9th overall in terms of average GPA (according to my ongoing calculations)

I liked Candiotti too, but boy does he get repetitive.

He says:

"That was a nice piece of hitting; he didn't try to do too much with it, he just hit it right back where it came from."

Word-for-word about 15 times every broadcast. Other than that he's a good coloUr man.

Campbell is an awful choice.

What possible evidence do you have to back that up? Give him a chance.

Dan Shulman was an early afternoon radio host when he was handed the Jays play-by-play gig. And he turned out to be one of the best. At least give a guy a fair chance before you slag him.

Dan Shulman was an early afternoon radio host when he was handed the Jays play-by-play gig. And he turned out to be one of the best.

And Chuck Swirsky, who I quite like during the Raptors broadcasts, is a terrible, terrible afternoon show host. Every once and a while I tune in again to see if he's growing into the afternoon job, because I keep thinking to myself "he's so good at basketball, he can't be that bad with the talk gig..."

Anyways, Campbell's fine on Sportsnet News, and all reports indicate that he's a big baseball fan, so I'm optimistic about his chances.

Campbell at least comes across as being smarter than Faulds. I never got the sense with Faulds that I was listening to a very sharp tack. During his broadcasts the word "duh!" always came springing to mind.

Not saying he wasn't smart, just that he didn't sound like it.

Every Grapefruit League game this afternoon got wiped out, but they're playing in Arizona.

I can't stand listening to Candiotti. He has such a monotone voice that grates on me. And like someone else said, he keep repeating the same phrases over and over throughout each broadcast. Literally every time someone swung and missed an off speed pitch he'd say "He really pulled the string on that one" grrr. Campbell on the other hand should be good. He seems to actually enjoy baseball and the Jays (he actually goes to the games sometimes and sits in the upper deck) and he seems to have a better personalty than Faulds.

So, I suggest that we keep our eyes on the slow-to-update box scores at Yahoo and wherever else we can find 'em and make up our own totally fake play-by-play.

In that case, surely you're not satisfied with a simple "canceled on account of weather."

In fact, this was the first game in history canceled on accoiunt of owls. Apparently hundreds, perhaps thousands of owls found their way to the diamond and obscured everyone's vision enough so that the game had to be canceled. The Jays tried to bring in Dave Winfield to fix the problem, but he apparently only works with seagulls.

At least that's what I heard. Anyone hear anything different?

Mick, you mean this rain thing they keep touting on the radio was a coverup for some organized owl invasion...

Wait, Florida is Jeb Bush country... what kind of owls did you say they were?

Me three, I think he was a pitcher that made a career out of a feel for the game on limited stuff. He's a clod in language arts but so what.

He brings great insight and is unafraid to speculate the upcoming play. He also seems to be a pretty good lip reader and sign catcher.

Two thumbs up.

Odd Griffin article... I don't know what to say about this one.

At one point he says "As we waited for her to shuffle the deck, Josh sank deeper and deeper into her lemon pie-coloured sofa, unwillingly settling into a Burt Reynolds-like pose from the old Cosmo magazine."
As someone not of his generation, is this Cosmo picture he speaks of common knowledge. Or is Griffin one of those metro sexual that just like Cosmo?

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1110323415933&call_pageid=969907739730&col=970081600908&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes

Here's the address for the article. BTW, can we still do COMNs???

You can't do COMN, but if you put the URL in when you're in plain old text mode it will be automatically converted into a clickable link.

Burt Reynolds appeared semi-nude in the early 70's in Cosmo. It was a big deal at the time but I don't remember the pose.

Good article about Jamie Campbell, written by Mike Toth:

http://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/columnist.jsp;jsessionid=NFFKMCHFBMGE?content=20050310_002936_3036

Thanks for the link, mistermike.

"Oh, that was Chuck Hartenstein down in Texas," Jamie replied. "He pitched for the Jays in 1977 and I was picking his brain. If I get into a 15-inning marathon, I'll need some good stories."

It's too good to be true.

It's too good to be true.

Yup, I think Campbell will be a good one. Perhaps a little rough around the edges at first but that's to be expected. Baseball has got to be the toughest sport to do play-by-play for.

Here's the news:

Sportsnet analyst role shared between Mulliniks, Tabler, Candiotti and Fletcher.
http://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article.jsp?content=20050310_141140_4900

Here's the Sportsnet Jay's sked:
http://www2.sportsnet.ca/tvschedule/tvsked_sport.php?region=ONTARIO&schedule_id=30

Gotta be tough for Jamie Campbell having to get used to four different analysts.

And the TSN sked. 42 games worth of Tabler and Black.

http://tsn.ca/mlb/news_story.asp?id=117855