We hates them! It's ours, it is, and we wants it!

Yarrr, the Jays won in the bottom of the ninth yesterday. Sparky with a fake bunt single and Huckaby chugging around third. Yo ho ho! Okay, enough dumb pirate jokes.

Today's Game Report is going to be a little different. I don't think anyone has ever done this before.

We saw Josh Towers shut down the Reds last year, and today we hope for the same against the other National League Central archrivals of the Toronto Blue Jays, the Pittsburgh Pirates. It's Roy Halladay versus Kip Wells, or so Spencer Fordin tells me.

How much difference does a manager make to a baseball team? Conventional wisdom suggests that managers are not that important, a bad manager can lose you more games than a good manager can win you; 2005 will be an interesting test of that piece of baseball wisdom. Jekyll, aka the fiery Larry Bowa, is gone; Hyde, in the guise of Charlie Manuel, is in. Will that change be the catalyst for the Phillies to finally win the division? I have seen a number of suggestions that the Phillies will do better in 2005 with their new manager, but this writer says the Phils will not win the NL East.

I tune into the game yesterday through an online feed, and who do I hear doing play-by-play? Mike Wilner. I have only heard him do one inning before -– the first inning on the day of Tom Cheek’s tribute. I believe Reed Johnson hit a homerun.

Mike Wilner, or Wiener Milk, is clearly a Box favourite. So why is this important?

The Dunedin Blue Jays are the team's high-A affiliate in the Florida State League. The team's top college prospects, from Russ Adams and David Bush to David Purcey and Adam Lind, usually begin their first full season there. With the move of the low-A affiliate from Charleston to Lansing, Dunedin also has the nicest spring climate of any of the team's minor league franchises. This makes it a natural destination for pitchers recovering from arm surgery.

Since the rise of the A’s five or so years ago, the AL West has featured, at minimum, two teams who could be reasonably ranked in the top five or six in all of baseball. For much of that time, the Seattle Mariners were one of them, winning at least 90 games four consecutive years—including, of course, the 116-win season in 2001—and earning two post-season berths in the process. That epoch is over. The Mariners lost 99 games last year, but even if they had lost only 85, they have been passed by the Rangers and now stand as the fourth-best team in a four-team division.

Today in Spring Training action the Jays take on the mighty Reds, a team tabbed to battle it out for the big potato this October by a certain Batter's Box analyst who will remain nameless to protect his reputation.

Unfortunately, the Toronto Raptors, a team that's actually playing a regular season sport, have forced this game off of the dial in Toronto. The good news is that it appears that the Fan network is carrying the game on their other channels, so if you've got a radio with decent reception you should be able to pull in a signal even if you're a Torontonian.

Today we'll look at the Spring Training stat sheet and decide who should make this year's club.

Roberto Alomar announced his retirement today.

For some unknown reason, I found myself drawn into the Astros' playoff run last year, and followed them via the magic of internet radio. Maybe it was their terrible jerseys, or maybe it was the silly name of their stadium, who knows.

Anyhow, our beloved home team faces the Houston Minute Maids this afternoon, and the game will be broadcast on the Fan 590 for those of us in the Toronto listening area.

"You spend your life gripping a baseball and it turns out it was the other way around all the time."
-------Jim Bouton

The real story from last night's game was all about a former Blue Jay. Roberto Alomar made two errors in the top of the 1st, struck out looking in the bottom of the inning and then came out of the game.

It was Alomar's first game after missing a week with back problems, and he told Lou Piniella last night that he was having difficulty seeing. Speculation is rife that he will announce his retirement later today.

It's the Bad Blood Brothers rematch! Of course, there were no fireworks last time and probably won't be any this time, either.

There's also no TV and no Toronto radio coverage. There is a TBay broadcast for you Gamedayers, so we're not totally in the dark on this one.

Three things you might not know about the 2004 Texas Rangers:

• The offense was not great.
• The rotation was not terrible.
• The bullpen was phenomenal.

Unlike their division rivals, the Rangers hit the pause button after the season ended and will return with virtually the same group that posted the franchise's first winning record in five years. Other than right field, designated hitter, and one rotation spot, the names haven't changed. Texas will seek internal improvement, perhaps augmented with an in-season trade or two.

Thursday's rains in Florida meant another spring day without baseball. I wonder if teams will gradually relocate to Arizona, because of the more reliable March weather there. Rainouts and rain delays are perfect times to look at the broader picture, so here goes.

With the departure of Carlos Delgado, a legitimate question has been asked: how will the Jays score runs this year? There does not seem to be an abundance of either power or speed, and some have suggested that an increased use of the hit and run, the sacrifice, and other one-run strategies might be in order. Let's have a closer look.