As Spring Training draws to a close and the brilliant specter of another Opening Day looms, it's time to present the 10th of what will be 12 "all-month" teams for your discussion and mocker ... er, analysis.

Not much to report from yesterday's game. At least not much good. Well, Batista and Chulk didn't give up any runs. Alex Rios got two hits, one of them double in 4 at-bats. I'd tell you more, but...

The Orioles nudged closer to a winning record last year and climbed out of the fourth place cellar. This year they should be able to conclude the long journey back to a winning season, but not by much.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats....

Hunter Thompson is gone. There are no frightening bats in the desert.

There's eight Grapefruit League games left for the hometown heroes and three of them are against Cincinnati.

The roster still looks to be in a wee bit of flux.

Roy Halladay looked sharp. Schoeneweis, Ligtenberg, Speier, and Frasor were near-perfect. Frankie the Cat didn't just drive in 5 runs. He had a couple of hits against a left-hander. The Jays beat the NL East champs, they look just great, they're going all the way, man. All the way! YEAHH!!

It's spring time, we're allowed to dream. In fact, we should be dreaming.

You see, the spring will be over soon. We will be bumping our heads against Reality. Not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of the year. It might hurt. Let us dream while we still can...

BBFL owners keep five players from the previous year's roster. For the first time, Alomar owners will face the issue of lame ducks, as league rules stipulate that players cannot perform under the same ownership for more than three years. The junior Barfield Division owners chose their keepers for the first time.

And now, the 95 players each owner cannot draft in 2005:

There's some excellent news for us Canadians: the Fan radio network is carrying today's game as a Good Friday treat for us, and it's a match-up between two cable television empires run by men named Ted! Needless to say, the game isn't on TV.

Can the Jays keep ahead of the surging Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim Which Is In California and maintain sole possession of first place in the American League? Will this showdown prove once and for all which Ted is superior? Which is the Good Ted and which is the Evil Ted? Will a clever Box reader point out that Ted Turner no longer owns the Atlanta Braves? Can anyone think of a funnier way to work California into the official name of the Angels? Will someone figure out that NFH wrote this in the middle of the night but decided to post it as-is anyways?

Yankee day on Da Box.....

Recently I was trolling through my local library looking for a good read when my eyes came across ”The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty,” by Buster Olney. I was not that familiar with Buster’s writing but I had seen some comments on Batters Box suggesting that Mr. Olney’s work left something to be desired. I looked over the book thinking: “will I or wont I?” But it was February and I was desperate for a baseball fix so I decided to borrow the book. I am pleased to report that The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty is an excellent read, and Mr. Olney’s reputation, at least in these writer’s eyes, is restored.

Before I get to what I want to talk about, I'm going to give you a brief history of the NFH - Blue Jays love affair. It's necessary to explain why I feel the way I do about things. Don't worry, it doesn't get too goopy and nobody dies from a bee sting.

Okay, so it's true, the fairy dust has been sprinkled, the hot place below has been covered in frost, swine are airborne ... the Boston Red Sox are the defending World Series champions.

Gosh, that's still hard to believe, even going on five months later, as I write the phrase. But you know something the Red Sox aren't? They aren't the defending American League East champions.

From the Spring Training schedule, you'd suspect that the Minnesota Twins were being groomed by MLB to be the new rivals of the Toronto Blue Jays, but that just ain't so.

Instead, it's these guys. No Philadelphia radio feed today, and no Toronto radio, either, but there's a Toronto webcast available on Gameday.

This is the third consecutive shutout (albeit in a rain-shortened 6 ½ innings) I’ve covered in my Game Reports. Spring training shutouts are not the most exciting things in the world to write about, I can tell you.

What do you do for an encore? If you’re Mark Knopfler, you do Telegraph Road. If you’re Velvet Revolver, so I'm told, you do Sweet Child O' Mine. If you’re Thomas Dolby, you only had one hit anyway, so why are you touring?

But if you’re the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, whose inaugural season in 2004 ended by capturing the Eastern League championship title, what do you do? You open a brand-spankin’ new jewel of a ballpark, that’s what.

In a recent special Hall of Names essay called "The Tenth Man," Mike Green pointed out that an alternative approach could have linked Hall of Fame shortstop George Wright with young Mets 3B David Wright, and that this in itself might prove rich fodder for an additional Hall of Names compiilation.

Maybe so. Let's find out.