Travis Snider hit his first home run, a grand slam, and had three hits to push his average over .300.  Pulaski are 9-1 and cruising.  Jesse Litsch made his AA debut yesterday and pitched very well.  Those were the highlights of a day where the affiliates could only get one win.

The Jays were 9-9 in interleague play. The rest of the AL did much better.

It took two innings of Friday night's game for me to decide who was going to be Photo of the Day today.

Here's Lyle Overbay:

In the recent Bicentennial Men Hall of Names feature here on Batter's Box, which formed a fine All-Star team made up of big leaguers all born in the year 1976 a number of people stepped up with alternate all-year teams, and so we also met at least partial squads from, among others, 1957, 1959, 1980, 1982 and 1983. [Wednesday 7/5 Update: already added to this story are teams or partial teams for 1903, 1934, '35, 1945, '46, '47, '49, 1951, '55, '58, 1963, '64, '65, '66, 1970, '75, '77, '79 and 1981.]

Nice teams, one and all. But what's the very best year for producing big league talent? I'm going to set the bar pretty high with the year ...

This return to Toronto by a former starter whose name begins with C and now pitches for an NL team that wears red went a lot better for the home side than the last one did.

On our day, the Canadians in the Jay minor league system did pretty well.  David Corrente hit 2 sacrifice flies (how Canadian is that?) and caught a shutout in a Dunedin victory, while Jonathan Baksh doubled and singled and drove in 2 in an Auburn loss.  The farm affiliates went 4-2.

It's Canada's 139th birthday today, which is one hell of a coincidence, since that was probably the paid attendance at the game in our nation's capital last night.

Caramon was wondering how many of the runs allowed by Roy Halladay this season had come about because of home runs. This is well worth exploring, but we should put it in context. Which means that at the very least we should carry out the same exercise for the rest of the staff.

It's not a plate-blocking shot, but it'll have to do.  This one's for Geoff.

Here's Gregg Zaun chatting with the umpire after being handed a new baseball:

In my last minor league report Pulaski won their game, to help the Jays avoid being swept throughout the minors. Yesterday, one team managed to make sure the Jays avoid the sweep again. However, this time it was a case of one loss ruining the chance for a complete organisational sweep, as the parent club and all six minor league teams won. Yes, you read that right. All six minor league teams won and so did Toronto, yet it wasn’t an organisational sweep. Read on to find how this happened.

Believe it or not, this is the 200th installment of Batter's Box Interactive Magazine's Hall of Names. The complete archive is shown on one page here. Admittedly, I can't take full credit for the list of 200; 23 have been written by guest contributors while four more I have co-authored with someone. Anyway ...

How to celebrate such a milestone, if indeed we can label it as such? Well, anyone in or near the U.S. reading this who can remember the year 1976 will remember the utter overload and preponderance of the number 200, especially in lists.

That year was the birthplace of baseball's 200th birthday as a nation, or "bicentennial." (Subject of a previous Hall of Names entry, here.) It was the second of back-to-back titles for the Big Red Machine. It was the year of Mark "The Bird" Fidrych in Detroit. It was an MVP year for Joe Morgan and Thurman Munson and meant Cy Young Awards for Jim Palmer and Randy Jones. It was the year before big league baseball landed in Toronto.

It was also the year of the birth of a 104 major league ballplayers -- so far, anyway ...

So this is what good starting pitching is like.

Lansing won near the end and a Batter's Box favourite had the right stuff in Syracuse but, unfortunately, the offense didn't. Six games on the farm last night out of a scheduled seven. Can you guess who had the rain delay?

Frank Catalanotto had another great night at the plate on Wednesday.  What else is there to do but to make him the photo of the day?

Here's the Cat in mid-swing -- does it look like he's checking it?  I don't know enough about the mechanics of a swing to tell you for sure.

In an article in yesterday's Hardball Times, Steve Treder names Darrell Evans, Norm Cash and Reggie Smith as underrated players. I agree with those choices. Steve's comments got me to thinking about an All-Underrated Team.