How did John Gibbons organize the rotation this year? How did he juggle the starters and the off-days? Did he get anything done?

Disclaimer/Confession: I finished writing this about 45 seconds before Pujols hit the homer Sunday. I'm glad I can post it, unedited, now, and with no sense of irony or further fear of jinxing involved.

The Houston Astros, in their 44th season of existence, are headed to the franchise's first World Series. The best man of the World Series dropped to one knee tonight and offered up a promise ring -- one with a (baseball) diamond attached, of course.

Now maybe Toronto fans, spoiled by multiple World Series within their team's first two decades of existence, can't appreciate the magnitude of that statement ...

All-October 20

As regular readers of this feature on Batter's Box will no doubt already know, I make no qualms about the fact that I stole -- er, borrowed -- the whole concept of "Baseball's Hall of Names" from that "other" Mick Doherty, he would no doubt claim "the original" Mick Doherty, dad.

In lieu of spending actual cash on a birthday gift (no, seriously, dad, it's on the way), I'm here to spend some cache instead ... in the form of an All-Birthday Hall of Names team. Some may recall that we've encroached on this territory before, with an All-July 20 team that celebrated (ahem) my own date of birth.

So now, exactly three months later, we revisit the concept and put together a team that, frankly -- no, wait, there are no Franks on the team, so instead, we'll put together a team that [affect Cary Grant voice here] Judy, Judy, Judy (Johnson), would just beat the living hell out of my own all-birthday lineup.

Photo of the Week returns with Russ Adams standing outside of the Jays dugout, waiting his turn in the batter's box:

Reports indicate that New York Yankees bench coach Joe Girardi has agreed in principle to become the Florida Marlins' new manager.

So that's what the off-season feels like ... every summer, I forget. No baseball yesterday!

That's not to say there wasn't baseball news -- okay, it wasn't BIG baseball news, and it's all out of New York, which I know annoys some Bauxites, but in Flushing, Mets RP Felix Heredia was suspended for the first 10 days of the 2006 season for violating MLB's steroids policy, while in Da Bronx, IF Mark Bellhorn elected free agency rather than a trip to Columbus. Wow, the implications of those two moves for fans of teams everywhere ...

Oh, and today is Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown's birthday (how did he tell people how old he was when he turned four, anyway?) and also the birthday of both Keith Foulke and former Cy Young winning closer-turned-meltdown Mark Davis ... parallels?

Before last night, the most memorable homers of this post-season had been hit by Brad Ausmus and Chris Burke. Not your most likely suspects.

Albert Pujols. That's a little more like it.

You know the old baseball saying, passed down from little league coaches of yore, "A walk's as good as a hit," right?

Well, does that mean that our All-Walker team will be filled with Hitters? Well, with Harry, Larry, Dixie and Todd in the lineup, it just might be.

Just two of the top 25 most common North American surnames remain in our quest for the perfect Hall of Names lineup/roster; for reasons that we'll delve into later, we're saving the #17 name for last and skipping right to #25, which you will have surmised from the preceding paragraph, is "Walker."

From toronto.bluejays.mlb.com

The Toronto Blue Jays regret to announce the passing of former coach and team executive Al Widmar. Albert Joseph Widmar died on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma after a battle with colon cancer at the age of 80. Widmar first joined the Blue Jays organization on November 1, 1979 ... Read the full media release.

For just the second time since the Black Sox scandal, the Chicago White Sox are going to the World Series.

The 18th most-common North American surname is "Garcia" -- and it's the highest-ranking non-Anglo surname on the list; yes, yes, we've already unveiled the All-Martinez team, but keep in mind that Martinez ranks 19th, or just behind Garcia, among North American surnames.

Latino naming conventions are somewhat different, of course, so we will make some allowances for what "surname" means by focusing on those players who commonly used the name as the "second" or "family" name -- you know, the one that appears on the back of the jersey. That means that former All-Star middle infielders Carlos Jesus Garcia Guerrero and Damaso Domingo Garcia Sanchez are eligible. They'd better be ..

As you might remember, we recently pored over a Data Table that used Bill James' Pythagorean Method to determine the Expected Win-Loss record of every major league team.

I regarded the results as very good news for the 2006 Blue Jays. If the Jays score 775 runs and allow 705 next year, they're much more likely to go 89-73 than to put up another 80-82 record. I may not have been Named for Hank, but I know when the glass is half-full.

Almost two weeks of sitting around and waiting his turn didn't bother Jon Garland very much.

Houston got the win in St. Louis that they needed, and the White Sox are going to need to win a game in Anaheim.

There have been 29 major league players with the surname "Martin" -- just four of them have been All-Stars, and one of those four -- the one you've probably thought of already -- will both start at 2B and manage the team, at least until an impatient owner fires him ...

Of course Martin, the 16th-most common North American surname, is literally only 75 percent of the name that Martinez is (the first six of eight letters is three-quarters, or 75 percent, natch) and Martinez is the 19th-most popular North American surname (though there have actually been more big league Martinezes, 33, than Martins), so we'll visit Hall of Names team for both ...