One year ago, Smooth Johnny Gizzi told you that whether the A’s would win the West depended on just how good the Angels were, and to a lesser extent what Texas and Seattle did. Turns out the Angels were very good and the Rangers good enough to cause trouble, spelling the end of the A’s 4-year run of playoff appearances. Seven months before the Sox made their incredible comeback against the Yankees and it became fashionable to spread the word that The Curse was so much bunk, there was Jordan saying so. Craig B told you that the Rays were awful and would continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Check.

Meaning what, exactly? You got me; the editorial board comes up with these headlines. Probably that “Mick” fellow, specifically. Whatever the case, I don’t have any “notes” to offer for today. I'm working on a dozen previews and stuff for other Web sites (yes, including this one), so my creative juices are dried up. For proof I offer that previous line, which is perhaps what the word "cliche" was invented for.

I remember it clearly. It was back in 1997, and I was sitting at my desk in an upstate New York brownstone apartment, reading what was then called "ESPN Sportszone" through my high-powered 56K modem Internet connection, when I stumbled across an essay by Keith Olbermann, then still an integral part of "Sportscenter," called "The Ninth Man."

Olbermann was always a good on-air personality, but this essay cemented what I always suspected -- he was an even better writer. I used several of Olbermann's old ESPN.sportszone.com essays in the freshman writing classes I was teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at the time to demonstrate one point or another, but never this particular one because I didn't believe the standard 18-year-old engineering major would "get" the power of "The Ninth Man."

To truly appreciate this essay, you have to be a baseball fan -- that's "fan" in the linguistic sense, as in "just short for fanatic" -- and you must have a feel for the history of the game and the power of baseball relationships across time. The readers of Batter's Box will understand "The Ninth Man" -- and after all these years, may also understand why, in retrospect, I now believe Olbermann didn't even take the concept far enough. But we'll do so here.

Among baseball's many commonly used terms are things like "Staff Ace", "Solid #3 starter", and "Back of the rotation guy". But as with many baseball terms, these can mean very different things to different people. As the Blue Jays look ahead to 2005, few would question Roy Halladay as a legitimate Staff Ace. But is Ted Lilly a Solid #3? Josh Towers is certainly not a front of the rotation starter, but is he a liability or an asset at the back?

So how did I not know about this place before?

Spring is a season of revival. As such, it's time I revived the Batter's Box Trivia Challenge.

Apropos of some writing I’m doing for another Web site, I have been skating through last year’s statistics. While it’s always best to look forward, the past is unavoidable when you’re preparing for the new season. Re-hashing the previous season’s numbers is always a re-learning experience for me; it’s astonishing how much I forget from October to February.

Some notable failed recollections:

A few days ago in Jonny German's Spring Training '05 report called "Pitcher This," Batter's Box regular jsoh wrote, "I'm desperately hoping for Spike Lundberg to make the team ... he's got a name to die for. Come on. Spike. Lundberg. Can't you just hear Murray Eldon announcing him? Tickets for the Spike Lundberg bandwagon are on sale at the door."

Sounds like it's time for the another edition of "Ask Spike," as the new Jay hurler stopped by Batter's Box for an interview and to take questions back in mid-November, and he returns now to do so again.

I've been listening to Tom Cheek on the radio as long as I can remember. He's an integral part of my childhood and teenage memories. When someone says "baseball", I think of Tom Cheek. I have to get that out of the way off the top before someone accuses me of being a homer -- when it comes to Tom Cheek, hell yes, I am a homer.

Here we go, with our standard "Hall of Names" companion piece to Mike Green's current Hall Watch profile, this one of Frank "Bat-Man" Thomas' sidekick, Robin Ventura.

It seems remarkable, but only four men in the history of the game have been named "Robin" -- and if Ventura ever enters the Hall of Fame (unlikely, but obviously at least worth discussing, or we wouldn't be here) that means three of the four Robins will be enshrined in Cooperstown. Ventura would join Robin Roberts and Robin Yount in The Hall, leaving former Cubs/A's/Rockies/Reds outfielder Robin Jennings wondering just what the hell happened.

But no, even with two current Hall of Famers, there's no "Rockin' Robin" team to be built. So do we go with the 21 guys with the initials "RV" for an "All-Big-Rig" team? Uh, no. How about guys like Ventura who share a name with a famous highway? Unlikely at best. But wait ... read through that Mike Green Hall Watch piece again. See the comparison of Ventura to Ron Cey? An idea takes flight ...

Robin Ventura is a 6 time Gold-Glove winning third baseman and a fine hitter. That normally isn't enough for the Hall, and it probably won't do for Ventura, but I thought that it would be fun to recap his career and remember some other fine third basemen who are just outside the Hall. Ventura hit .243/.337/.362 in 152 ABs for the Dodgers in 2004 at age 36. His career does seem to be winding down.

The Blue Jays will be selecting 6th in the 2005 Draft next summer. Some of the top candidates the Jays may select were discussed previously.

Previously, Mike Moffatt looked at the history of the 6th pick in the draft going back until 1965.

While the Jays will be selecting 6th in the draft I wanted to take a broader look at the players selected in previous drafts. So I went back, using The Baseball Cube as a resource, and looked at the players drafted from pick 6 through pick 15 from the ten drafts in the 90s.

If you're one of our U.S. visitors, hopefully you're enjoying a nice day off, and we thank you for spending some time with us. But if you're old enough, probably you remember the glory days when Lincoln's b-day and Washington's b-day were celebrated as separate holidays. Merge them into one? What an outrage! Imagine your parents deciding to celebrate you and your sister's b-day on the same day.

The Blue Jays announced that they'll have $210 million to spend on player salaries from 2005-2007. Here's a look at the projected team for each of those years.

Welcome to the inaugural Photo of the Week. Until the season gets going I'll be recycling material from last year, some of which has not yet been seen by anyone but me.

Next year I'm hoping that we'll have enough money in the budget to send me down to Florida for Spring Training to really do this feature right, but in the meantime you're just going to have to deal with leftovers.