Okay, enough of this soft-tossing, rose-coloured glasses stuff about autographs when you were a kid and favourite Saturday Night Live characters. On to the hardcore stuff in today's ...

Question of the Day: Your life is on the line, and one baseball game will decide if you live or die. The team behind you is the 1992 Blue Jays; they're facing off with one of the great teams of all time, the Mantle-Maris-Berra-Howard-Skowron- Boyer-Kubek-Richardson 1961 Yankees, who send Whitey (25-4) Ford to the Exhibition Stadium mound. You, on the other hand, can choose any pitcher, at any age, from any team in any era to start the game of your life (literally) -- except Ford, of course. So you point to the bullpen, the gate opens, and who comes trotting out to take the ball for the first inning? Note: give more than just the name; give a reason you selected this one hurler for this one absolutely must-win game.

Oh, and if you hear any MYOR stuff, feel free to get your link on.

All the heroes and legends I knew as a child
Have fallen to idols of clay ...
- Styx, "Show Me the Way," © 1997

The recent Weekend Update thread included a couple of reminiscinces, including one from Bauxite GeoffAtMac, who met Jimmy Key in 1992, back when, as he put it, he "was a young lad of 10 years of age." (Yo, Geoff, that makes you what, 22? You're still a young lad. Hmph.); another was from from GregH, whose sons met Mr. Blue Jay, Ernie Whitt, quite recently. Which brings us to today's ...

Question of the Day: Did you ever meet a big league ballplayer when you were a young lad (or lass) of 10 or so? Who was it? What do you remember about the experience? (Ed. Note: this QOTD is not to be confused with the popular Batter's Box Personal Stories Of Brushes With Third-Rate Celebrity Contest from a few hundred threads ago. But third, fourth- and even tenth-rate ballplayers are just fine.)

And in the Make Your Own Roundup vein, we can start with reports that Carlos Delgado has an offer from the Marlins, Eric Munson may get Corey Koskie's old job in the Twin Cities, while former Jay and Expo leading men Raul Mondesi and Tony Armas found new homes -- or, in Armas' case, re-signed the lease on his old one. (Source for all these: ESPN.com, BBRRS = Dan Patrick's hair.) What else is going on out there?

I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular
-- "How Soon Is Now" by The Smiths, © 1985

As we learned on Tuesday, where Baseball's Hall of Names is concerned, it's not all that hard Keeping Up with the Joneses. Ah, but could a team composed completely of ballplayers bearing the name of ashamed motel attendees all over North America, do just that?

The early guess here would have been that a team of all Smiths would take (and perhaps sweep) the Jones season series, 18-1 or 17-2 (they play so often because they are both members of the Generic Name Central Division). But a closer look suggests just a 10-9 or 11-8 advantage to the Smith Boys.

Let's see.

Texas Ranger relief pitcher "Generalissimo" Frankie Francisco is still suspended.

As you offer discussion points and "Make Your Own Roundup" links throughout this Saturday and Sunday, please make an effort to "cast" a current big leaguer in a Saturday Night Live role as appropriate. This can be due to his name, the way he looks ... whatever. And would someone please explain the headline and the first sentence of this post to our younger Bauxites?

I had a friend was a big baseball player -- back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar; I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
but all he kept talking about was
Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

Question of the Day: What are your specific major league baseball (and other professional sports) memories of the year you graduated from high school? (If you did not attend or graduate from high school or live in a country where "high school" is not a relevant term, go with "the year you turned 18.")

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hereby issue the first of what will hopefully be many NFH Challenges.

Mr. Robert Dudek, you are so certain that Shea Hillenbrand is a bad investment. What will Mr. Hillenbrand have to do to prove you wrong?

All this fussin' and feudin' over Shea Hillenbrand, Eric Hinske and the wide variety of third basemen the Jays have or have flirted with, let's settle on a pretty basic, set-the-bar ...

Question of the Day: Who are the greatest (single season, Blue Jay career and overall career) 1B, 3B and DH the Jays have ever employed?

And of course, since we are consistently cracking 150 and even reaching 300 occasionally in the daily threads, please link safely as you continue to ... Make Your Own Roundup.

After the holiday break, the winter leaguers returned to action. Ismael Ramirez got back on track with a solid start (5.2IP, 5 hits, 2 earned runs, 0 W, 3K).

It's been all over Da Box recently ... Mientkiewicz, Grudzielanek, Catalanotto, Menechino, now Schoeneweis, which by my count has been spelled nine hundred and four different ways on this site since yesterday.

It's time to see if we can't mix it up a bit, draw the right tiles and spell it out ... a full roster for the Batter's Box All-Scrabble team. (Today's Honourary Team Captain is Mike Denyszyn, also known as "3141 21141(10)41" who scores a 33!)

To post and read "Make Your own Roundup" news, please visit yesterday's old and now-ironically-named New for the sake of new QOTD thread, which was posted late in the day when the original thread asploded.

But first, play the game!

It's official: the Toronto Blue Jays have acquired Shea Hillenbrand from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for Adam Peterson. Hillenbrand presumably becomes the Blue Jays' full-time DH, spelling Eric Hinske at 1B now and again. And except for a few million dollars that may or may not be spent in the next several weeks, that's your 2004-05 Blue Jays' off-season.

Baseball '05 seem painfully far off 'bout now? Well, did you realize that exactly six months from tomorrow, the All-Star squads from each league will gather in Detroit's CoPa cabana to determine whether the World Series home field will be in southern Ohio or in northeast Ohio (just kidding -- I think)? So, who will be representing Toronto in this festive gala? (Remember, your predictions will be here to link back to come July!) What about other team reps? Who will be the surprises? The annual returnees? That's right, it's today's mid-January ...

Question of the Day: Who will be playing in the 2005 All-Star Game, representing what teams? And keep in mind the annual difference between who should go and who actually goes!

And of course, please continue to ...
Make Your Own Roundup ....

Oscar Wilde would be proud. No, wait, that was art for art's sake. Close enough.

OK, so this is the new-and-improved QOTD/MYOR. Let the comment above be the LAST non-baseball comment on this thread.

New QOTD: Who leads the Jays in saves this year? I posed this last year, and I don't know if anyone guessed Jason Frasor, so let's see if we can do better.

Oscar Wilde would be proud. No, wait, that was art for art's sake. Close enough.

OK, so this is the new-and-improved QOTD/MYOR. Let the comment above be the LAST non-baseball comment on this thread.

New QOTD: Who leads the Jays in saves this year? I posed this last year, and I don't know if anyone guessed Jason Frasor, so let's see if we can do better.

Oscar Wilde would be proud. No, wait, that was art for art's sake. Close enough.

OK, so this is the new-and-improved QOTD/MYOR. Let the comment above be the LAST non-baseball comment on this thread.

New QOTD: Who leads the Jays in saves this year? I posed this last year, and I don't know if anyone guessed Jason Frasor, so let's see if we can do better.

According to one of Batter's Box's various Ryans earlier today, "It took [the Blue jays] until 2002 to finally have a Smith and there still hasn't been a Jones in the team's history." I can't resist a challenge (such as the one subsequently issued by Mike Green, so here goes with the All-Jones team proposed in today's main thread.

A few notes ... exactly 90 players named Jones have appeared in a big league uniform. And exactly one of those players, William Timothy Jones, caught one inning of one game for the Cardinals in 1989; and as far as I can tell, no other Jones has ever appeared behind the plate in a big league uniform.

So we're not exactly starting with a bedrock foundation; even the aforementioend W. Timothy's versatility -- primarily an infielder, he appeared in at least one game at every position, including pitcher -- goes to waste, since nobody else can catch. But we might have the greatest defensive outfield of all time.