But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back
To earth, who can tell?

I guess there is no one to blame
We're leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?

As usual, here's my monthly report card for July. It wasn't a good month, but it could have been worse: only one star player went on the disabled list. And nobody got arrested or anything like that.

On the occasion of our 1,000,000th hit (look at the counter at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar) we at Batter's Box would like to thank all our readers for supporting the site through thick and thin, good times and bad, hot stove and day games and night games. We hope we can continue to entertain and inform you into the future. Thanks for your eyeballs, your e-mails, your camaraderie and your comments.

The trade deadline has come and gone quietly for the Blue Jays.

Today, David Bush takes on the Devil Rays for the second time. A day after talking to us, Bush battled the Rays in Skydome and earned his first major league win. Bush threw nearly 70% of his pitches for strikes and gave up 3 runs (only 1 earned) in 7.1 innings. He walked 1 batter, struck out 2 and gave up a solo dinger to Aubrey Huff.

With Victor Zambrano now a Met, the Rays throw Jorge Sosa against Toronto.

Lee Sinins's daily reports are a great place to get your baseball news in digest form. There were several juicy rumours and of course some trades (both high and low impact) on the penultimate day before the "first" trading deadline. Here are the trades in distilled form:

LA gets Brad Penny, Hee Seop Choi and minor league P Bill Murphy
FLA gets Guillermo Mota, Paul Lo Duca and Juan Encarnacion

METS get Kris Benson, minor league 2B Jeff Keppinger
PIT gets Ty Wigginton, minor league P Matt Peterson, INF Jose Bautista
KCR gets mior league C Justin Huber

TBD gets minor league Ps Scott Kazmir and Jose Diaz
METS get Victor Zambrano and minor league P Bartolome Fortunato

SFG gets Ricky Ledee, minor league P Alfredo Simon
PHI gets Felix Rodriguez

PHI gets Todd Jones, minor league OF Brad Correll
CIN gets minor league P Josh Hancock and minor league SS Anderson Machado

A losing night overall down on the farm. Adam Peterson blew up good, again.

Our only goal will be the western shore.
So now you’d better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
For peace and trust can win the day

The Jays are back at square one. After being swept in Toronto, the D-Rays swept the hapless Royals, gaining 2 games in the standingsto lead the fifth place Blue Jays by 4 games.

Tampa Bay outscored Kansas City 18 to 3 over the three games. Tall lefthanded Mark Hendrickson tossed a 4-hit shutout, allowed but one unearned run. Rob Bell and 3 relievers combined on a 4-hit shutout to complete the sweep.

Josh Towers and John Halama are the scheduled starters.

Apologies once again for a rather spartan Advance Scout. I'm pulling a Joe Namath, though, and guaranteeing against the odds that the Cleveland Scout next week will be a real bang-up report.

In the meantime, enjoy the series! The Devil Rays bounced back from their lost weekend in Toronto by returning home and sweeping the hapless crew from Kansas City. The Jays are eager to smack 'em down again. Should be a good one.

A four day homestand, featuring two day games, and one of them is on a holiday!

Thanks to our own Coach and Will "The Thrill" Hill of the Jays, I had a photographic press pass to last Friday's game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

In a rather dismal season for the Blue Jays, many of us have taken a keener interest in the minor leagues. As my own knowledge of Blue Jays prospects has increased, so has my interest in the context of the stats being compiled by The Future.

Is there any better kind of science?

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains. Three wins, three losses, and two rainouts for the minor league affiliates last night.

Where we fight our parents out in the streets
To find who's right and who's wrong