No late-season charge
Lost reliable pitchers
But then, Carlos came

With their new superstar slugger, can the Marlins reclaim their mojo that led to their improbable Series triumph in 2003? One of the final previews here at the Box features the National League entry from Florida. As always, additional senryus from Box readers are most welcome.

One year ago, Blue Jays fans were coming off a season filled with highs, looking forward to the imminent return of the 2003 Cy Young award winner and the 2003 MVP runner-up at first base.

Well, we all know how that turned out.

The college baseball season is a couple months old, so as many students prepare to take midterm exams we'll take a look at how the top baseball prospects are grading out on the field so far.

The following story will appear in the April 1 and April 15 editions of American Way magazine, the award-winning inflight magazine of American Airlines. It is republished here in full with permission of the author.

Last summer, Mrs. Hank and I went on a neat little road trip, first out to New Brunswick for a friend's wedding, and then down to Boston to visit some relatives. Mrs. Hank's uncle is a Boston tennis pro, and so when he put out the word that his niece and her hubby were coming out to visit, some pretty fantastic Red Sox tickets were offered to him.

Here's the view from 'em:

As Spring Training winds down and the regular season starts to peek over the horizon, the Toronto Blue Jays face their old, er, new rivals from Philadelphia for the final time this year.

No radio or TV in Toronto, though the Jays home crew are doing an internet-only broadcast for MLB Gameday subscribers.

So, I didn't get to hear the game, and I got to see about thirty seconds of one-camera highlights on Sportsnet News last night. Not a lot to base a game report on.

And that's why I'm cheaping out!

The Syracuse Skychiefs have been the ugly sister of the Blue Jays minor league system for several years now. While Blue Jay minor league teams at AA, High A, A and Low A have been winning their divisions the Chiefs have been suffering through four straight losing seasons. Well the Jays are not going to take it any more, they have spent extra cash in the off-season to bring in some experienced minor leaguers to supplement a handful of promising rookies in order to restore some glory to the Skychiefs. The Jays have another motive for their support of the Chiefs, before last season the Board of Directors of the Chiefs expressed their dissatisfaction to the Jays, improve or we will find another major league team to affiliate with, was the message. The Jays have heard and have reacted.

I saw the below cartoon today and just absolutely could not resist, because it leads to such an interesting QOTD (remember those?) ...

It's a battle of lefties: Gustavo Chacin vs Dave Williams. Or, if you prefer, the ace of the 2004 New Hampshire Fisher Cats vs the ace of the 2000 Hickory Crawdads.

No radio over the air and no radio at either team's official site. Looks like some Yahoo! boxscore following for us today.

There are nine days to go until the start of the minor league seasons and the roster shuffling has started already with six pitchers released by the Jays.

What a crappy game. Was there anything noteworthy about it?

I can't think of anything. I thought about it for hours and I couldn't come up with anything to say about yesterday's game. This should be a fun Game Report, then.

Dave Bidini, author of Baseballissimo wanted me to pass this along to you. Baseballissimo is easily the best baseball-related book I read all of last year, so I encourage you to go out and get a copy if you haven't already.

It's the penultimate home game of the Spring today. The Yankees visit with Jaret Wright on the mound, the Jays send out David Bush. Kerry Ligtenberg, Vinnie Chulk and Justin Miller are also expected to pitch according to Dr Fence.
This one is on the mlb.com, anyone know if there is a free webcast anywhere ?

Now that the Sox really know what it's like not to sing the blues, what will they do for an encore?

We asked the Batters Box roster for their opinions on some key Red Sox questions.