Two weeks remain in the regular season. Get out your Maalox.

I wasn't able to get an AL East report up this week due to illness, so I hope this suffices.

Unicorns and cannonballs, palaces and piers,
trumpets, towers and tenements
wide oceans full of tears
flags, rags, ferryboats, scimitars and scarves
every precious dream and vision underneath the stars

Gregg Zaun chucks a paper cup over his shoulder as he leaves the game, ejected for arguing a call at the plate during a game against Tampa Bay at the Rogers Centre:

What to discuss, what to discuss... Well, you cannot, by definition, have a positive discussion about the offense when the team does not score a run (and nobody has more than one hit), so that leaves the pitchers.

I have nothing against Pete Walker -- sources indicate he's great at ogling the Queen with Jeff Tam in unaired 2003 commercials -- but his ERA wasn't going to stay at 2.66 all year. (Nor will it stay at 3.12.) This wasn't a surprise. Scott "Schotime" Schoeneweis has a fun last name, but he faced just two batters. Vinnie Chulk didn't have three inherited runners to strand, so he was fairly unmemorable.

You have to love any Blue Jays game where the best part of it all was the losing pitcher. And he is the focus of today's Game Report. Sort of...

The Lugnuts win big, but the rest of the farm scores a collective 13 runs while allowing 30.

No.

Well, he tried.

Technical difficulties have gobbled up the Advance Scout report for the Yankees series. Sincere apologies, folks.

Here's the chart breaking down the matchups for this crucial four-game set.

New York is waiting for you and me, baby
Waiting to swallow us down
New York, we're coming to see what you're made of
Are you as great as you sound?

It's not often a team finds itself down by 15 runs....

For those of us who need a little inspiration, here's Justin Speier:

With the end of the season just over two weeks away some of the Jays affiliates are chasing playoff spots. Syracuse rode Gabe Gross' hot bat to beat Ottawa. The Chiefs need to win again today in Ottawa to set themselves up for a four game showdown against division leading Buffalo this week. New Hampshire were swept by Portland but are still in a playoff spot. Dunedin and Auburn would also be in the playoffs if the season ended today. And Josh Banks walked a batter, his first since June.

With the minor league season entering the final two weeks it was a good time to catch up with Omar Malave, the manager of the Dunedin Blue Jays. Malave is a long time Blue Jay having been signed in 1980 as a free agent out of Venezuela. Malave played in the Jays minor league system until 1989 when he ended his minor league career hitting .220 between Knoxville and Syracuse. In 1990 Malave joined the Jays team in Medicine Hat as a coach and he has been a manager at all levels of the Blue Jay system since 1991. This is Malave’s second year managing the Dunedin Blue Jays in the Florida State League.

Well that was no fun.

Initially Speaking, That Is

An interesting twist on the Hall of Names (initially speaking) ... who are the best double-initial players for each of the first 23 letters of the English alphabet?

Put your mind at ease -- that's not a random stopping point; there has never been a major league player whose last name began with "X" and none of the "Y" and "Z" players had alliterative first names. (Jimmie "Double X" Foxx, though a worthy Hall of Famer, here obviously is not a true Hall of Namer.) Well, unless you count RHRP George Washington "Zip" Zabel, who was 12-14 for the 1913-15 Cubbies -- that's your alliterative double-initial Chicago CCubs. (Come to think of it, some of the others -- I.I. and Q.Q. won't exactly be a walk in the park either.)

The Cubs, of course, are the only non-Pennsylvania-based team to have an alliterative name; that is, unless you cheat just a little and count the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim along with your Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies.

But we're not interested in teams here. We're looking for the very best alliterative, double-initialed players from AA to ... uh, WW. And as always, a few rules ...

Meh. The Jays are swept in Detroit.

This one was like Friday, only worse.