Last year's Astros didn't play the winningest baseball in franchise history but did offer the most exciting. Dead as a doornail in mid-August -- 56-60 and in seventh place in the wild card standings - Houston roared to 36-10 finish, won its first ever playoff series, and came within four innings of the World Series.

Do the 2005 Astros have what it takes to expand on last year's accomplishments?

Like Dave Berg, who we remembered yesterday, Jason Kershner also left the Blue Jays this offseason to sign with the Boston Red Sox, hoping to catch on with the World Champions.

Please share your memories of Jason Kershner in this thread.

Spring Training Game Report: Yankees 8, Jays 0.

Mrs. Hank pretty much caught the essence of last night's game in one sentence. And while we did not shut it off and watch Survivor because I have some perverse sense of duty that made me watch to the end in order to be fully informed so that I could do a bang-up job on this game report, I didn't go back and watch my recording of the first couple of innings that I had only heard on the car radio. I couldn't do it to myself.

With yesterday's game being rained out, is this game seven or game eight? I say seven, but I'm happy to be corrected by baseball traditionalists.

Tonight's game is the first we'll see of our Fightin' Jays on television in 2005, on Rogers Sportsnet and mlb.tv (for free) tonight at 7:15.

Back in the dark days of January, Mick Doherty posted a cunning Question of the Day.

"Your life depends on this game (again?) and you trail by one with two down in the bottom of the ninth. You have runners -- Rickey Henderson and Lou Brock, actually -- on second and third and you can pick one hitter, from any team, any era, to stride to the plate to take his whacks against Dennis Eckersley. A walk does you no good, as the only other hitter available to you is Bob Buhl. Who do you tell to grab a bat?"

Bauxites, as always, rose to the challenge.

In all the hustle and bustle of the offseason, particularly our software change, I forgot to collect our thoughts on some departed players.

Please share your memories of Dave Berg in this thread.

This will possibly be the most pointless game report ever written, as the game was rained out. On top of that, as Dante Hicks would say "I'm not supposed to be here today!" So instead, I'll report on the spring training scores from the Classic Video Game league yesterday.

Let me take you back to the end of the 2004 season...

I am powerless against the allure of EA Sports' MVP Baseball 2005. The controller sits there on the floor, "pick me up", "play me", she will say. She is a formidable temptress, and I am well beyond the point of feigning self-control.

John Sickels' top 20 Jay prospects are up. For comparison, here is Jordan's top 30 from September.

Brandon League and David Purcey are the top rated prospects on John Sickels' list. Aaron Hill and Josh Banks rank 1, 2 on Jordan's.

Pistol linked, in another thread, to an online article by Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, who spent some time in the Blue Jays’ training camp this spring and has written about it for SI. Better him than Garth Brooks, I say. Suiting up for a big-league team is the secret dream of virtually everyone who writes about baseball, and Verducci clearly had a blast doing that in Dunedin. The article is a lively read, and promises an equally lively feature piece in SI. But it also scores a very positive hit for the Blue Jays organization in other ways.

*** UPDATE: the game was cancelled due to bad weather and will not be rescheduled. ***

I expect this to be a dull game thread -- not only is this game not on the radio or on TV, it's not on the radio or TV in Pittsburgh and it's not being webcast at all.

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.

Dave Stieb was named to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame a couple of weeks ago, and that seemed a good enough reason to look back at one of the greatest Blue Jays of them all.

Those of you not old enough to have seen him in his prime, from 1981 through 1985: trust me. You really missed something. No one else quite like him.

It is written in the Acts Of The Scribes,

Split squads today -- half the team is hosting the Phillies, and the other half is visiting Minnesota. Again. How many times do we have to play those guys? It's like they're the Spring Training Yankees.

One of the two games is being webcast for free at bluejays.com.