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.

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.

Looking at the schedule, a bunch of other grapefruit league games have already been cancelled due to rain, so I'm thinking that this game might not happen.

No TV, no radio from either side today, but those of you with Gameday can listen to a Toronto-helmed webcast. Well, you can if they play.

Apparently the Toronto Blue Jays are playing in the All-Twins division of the Grapefruit League this year. It doesn't bother me, but do the Twins fans get fed up with their former star being showcased at them over and over again?

I mean, think of what it would be like if we saw Carlos Delgado every other day during Spring Training! I feel a little bad for Twins followers.

It's another no TV, no radio extravaganza today, where every Jays run scored is assumed to be a home run by Gabe Gross until confirmed otherwise.

Yesterday's loss dropped Toronto to third place, behind Cleveland and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Detroit could find themselves in a tie with the Jays if they pull off a victory today.

With the Montréal Expos now in Washington, rumor has it that the Phillies are supposed to be our new rival for interleague play. So I guess that those of us who know nothing about them should read the upcoming Philadelphia preview next Monday.

The Jays have fallen to second place behind Cleveland, but only by the slimmest of margins. I recommend that they go in there today and show the new rivals who's boss and get that first place position back, killing two birds with one stone.

I was all set to say "hey, a new opponent", but the Jays played the Rays last week. One of these days we'll see some new people.

Last weekend's games showed up unheralded on the Fan 590. I suspect that we'll be lucky again today, since the Raptors are playing at night tonight. No plans to televise the game have been announced.

Maybe I've just never followed Spring Training this closely before -- do the Jays always play the Twins every other day? Are the two teams getting tired of each other?

Lucky for us, this game is also on Rogers Sportsnet this afternoon, with coverage starting at 1:00. Let's hope it's less like the last televised game and more like yesterday.

Last night was a rough one, but I'm betting that the Jays had a little bit of the "everyone's watching on TV" yips. This afternoon's game against the defending World Series champs isn't on television, so we can use it to put my theory to the test.

bluejays.com lists a "home" radio broadcast for the Jays but it is identified only as TOR, so I'm guessing it's not on the radio, just online. I'd gladly be wrong, though.

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.

*** 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.

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.

Ah, lunch time on Monday, possibly the dreariest time at work except for maybe 9:00 am on Monday. But today we have baseball to cheer us up...

Sadly, the Jays are not broadcasting today's game. If anyone sniffs out a working Indians feed, please share it.

Three days into Spring Training and already there's a rematch against Koskie's old team. How will the Fightin' Jays fare this time around?

The pitching matchup should be a good one, at least for the first two innings -- according to Saturday's Globe and Mail, we'll be seeing the mighty Roy Halladay up against the equally mighty Johan Santana.

MLB determined that there was "bad blood" between Toronto and Tampa Bay back in '03, maybe because the Rays thought the Jays were rhyming copycats intent on stealing their cleverly original idea of a black alternate jersey. Since that fateful homestand with its manufactured enmity, well, there has been some halfhearted bad blood.

Sadly, without Victor "My balls, they got a lot of move" Zambrano pitching for Tampa, there's not much of a chance that we'll see a half-dozen hit batsmen, ejections, or a bench-clearing brawl. Or at least we won't see all that started by a perfectly innocent series of wild pitches.