After John McDonald's grand slam the other night, I promised another Photo of the Day for him.  And here it is -- John McDonald shaking the dirt out of his pants after sliding in to second base:

Again ... that's initially speaking ...

We'll go off the beaten path for a moment in this double-ititial odyssey for the Hall of Names (See the first four double-initial teams, "AA" Through "CC", "DD" Through "FF", "GG" Through "JJ" and "KK" Through "MM," here), and see if we can't put together a full team, or even a full roster, of players by combining the nine (there's a good baseball number omen) letters which did not have at least nine players reach the bigs with double initials.

Those letters, unfortunately, include II, QQ, UU and XX, each of which contributed exactly zero double-initial players; UU and YY, each of which produced just one; and NN (five), OO (eight), VV (two) and ZZ (three). So that's a total of just 20 players, eleven of whom were pitchers, but let's see what we can do anyway ...

Pulaski looked like my softball team in the field last night - 7 errors.  The affiliates went 2-4 on the night.

Here's Jays farmhand Chad Mottola during his recent stint in Toronto, filling in for Alex Rios:

Yes, I was away - I was Moving. I could bitch and moan about the whole dreary process of Moving all day long if you like, but you probably wouldn't like, and why should you? So let's get cracking, shall we?

There are 25 men who have more than 3000 hits, and a 26th, Roberto Clemente, with exactly 3000. Naturally, some of the players we are watching today will carve out their own spots on this list. Everyone with 3000 hits is in the Hall of Fame, unless they're actually ineligible. That standard seems unlikely to change - 3000 hits will continue to mean automatic induction.

The affiliates went 0-5 on Monday.

The Rule 5 draft is over 3 months away, but it never hurts to look ahead.

Today is Larry Sherry's 71st birthday. So hat's off to the former Dodger World Series MVP and here's a question -- really don't know the answer here -- but could we possibly put together an entire team of players whose names internally rhymed, like "Larry Sherry" did? (You can see that spelling similarity is optional.)

Sherry (53-44, 82 saves career) is joined by another former Dodger RHP in Ed Head (27-23, 11 saves), and still another righty in the more recent Mark Clark (74-71, 10 years, five teams). Paul Schaal was a solid 3B for 11 years with the Angels and Royals. That's Harry Carey in the announcer's booth.

Who else?

Only six weeks remain in the regular season. Six weeks to separate the men from the boys, the Duckhorn Cabernet from the Boone's Farm, the autographed Roy Halladay jersey from Aaron's Shea Hillenbrand jersey.

Here's everyone's favourite sparkplug sliding into second base:

Nothing.

Lots of late game swings yesterday.  Syracuse, Dunedin and Auburn each took leads to the bottom of the ninth and lost.  New Hampshire were losing going to the bottom of the ninth and won in eleven.  New Hampshire and Lansing supplied the only two wins yesterday.

Okay, maybe the Fightin' Jays aren't invincible, but they laid down one hell of a beating on the Yankees yesterday, won three out of four games and the one they didn't win was awfully close.  To celebrate the newfound optimism in many a Jays fan's heart this morning, I give you a massive team celebration photo:

In celebration of an almost-sweep for the farm affiliates, who won 6 of 7, it's time for our Sunday minor league link-o-rama.