Before I get to what I want to talk about, I'm going to give you a brief history of the NFH - Blue Jays love affair. It's necessary to explain why I feel the way I do about things. Don't worry, it doesn't get too goopy and nobody dies from a bee sting.

Okay, so it's true, the fairy dust has been sprinkled, the hot place below has been covered in frost, swine are airborne ... the Boston Red Sox are the defending World Series champions.

Gosh, that's still hard to believe, even going on five months later, as I write the phrase. But you know something the Red Sox aren't? They aren't the defending American League East champions.

From the Spring Training schedule, you'd suspect that the Minnesota Twins were being groomed by MLB to be the new rivals of the Toronto Blue Jays, but that just ain't so.

Instead, it's these guys. No Philadelphia radio feed today, and no Toronto radio, either, but there's a Toronto webcast available on Gameday.

This is the third consecutive shutout (albeit in a rain-shortened 6 ½ innings) I’ve covered in my Game Reports. Spring training shutouts are not the most exciting things in the world to write about, I can tell you.

What do you do for an encore? If you’re Mark Knopfler, you do Telegraph Road. If you’re Velvet Revolver, so I'm told, you do Sweet Child O' Mine. If you’re Thomas Dolby, you only had one hit anyway, so why are you touring?

But if you’re the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, whose inaugural season in 2004 ended by capturing the Eastern League championship title, what do you do? You open a brand-spankin’ new jewel of a ballpark, that’s what.

In a recent special Hall of Names essay called "The Tenth Man," Mike Green pointed out that an alternative approach could have linked Hall of Fame shortstop George Wright with young Mets 3B David Wright, and that this in itself might prove rich fodder for an additional Hall of Names compiilation.

Maybe so. Let's find out.

The goal of this preview is to generate conversation. I do not want to tell you things, I want you to discuss things. Thars a' baseball conversation gold in them thar Bauxites, and I'ma aimin' to mine fer it.

Every year, it seems, there's one team that the Blue Jays seem to play over and over in the spring. Usually it's the Phillies, who train down the road in Clearwater, but this year it's the Twins, whom the Jays won't see again till the regular season, May 17th in Minneapolis. Dave Bush, the scheduled home-opener starter for Toronto, is slated to oppose Kyle Lohse. Expect the Jays to start sending their everyday lineup out there more frequently now, in an effort to get the squad cranked up earlier for the games that count and to avoid another disastrous April.

This article was inspired by Jordan Furlong’s original Dunedin Diary from Spring Training 2004, and I suggest you read that one -- if you haven’t already -- before continuing here. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

I tried to post this on a really cold day here in the Greater Toronto Area, just to rub it in. Enjoy!

The spectacular World Series that just concluded with Boston coming from behind in the tenth inning to snatch the championship away from New York went a long way indeed to redeeming a season that had been, in all honesty, rather disappointing.

The Series, however, and the final game in particular, was filled with drama and tension to a degree that was - well, frankly it was excessive. It was as if all the excitement and pleasure that one normally derives in the course of the long season had instead been crammed into these eight unforgettable games.

Batter's Box reader Max Parkinson gave us the heads on a deal that sends Aaron Wideman to the Jays in exchange for the Nationals being allowed to send former Jay and Rule 5 draftpick Ty Godwin to the minor leagues. This trade has been confirmed by TSN.ca.

Bauxite Keith Talent has passed along a few images from Dunedin to tide us over these last couple of weeks before the new season. Here's the first, up close and personal with a familiar face:

I've been going to different baseball websites to see what they predict for the Toronto Blue Jays for 2005. This is what I've found so far:

We hates them! It's ours, it is, and we wants it!

Yarrr, the Jays won in the bottom of the ninth yesterday. Sparky with a fake bunt single and Huckaby chugging around third. Yo ho ho! Okay, enough dumb pirate jokes.

Today's Game Report is going to be a little different. I don't think anyone has ever done this before.