The latest from Florida and beyond.

"And the storm blows up in her eyes
She will...
Suffer the needle chill
She's running to stand...
Still." - U2.

It seems like a different age. Believe it or not, the Orioles were the last team not being currently ignored by Robert Dudek to win the AL East.

The 1997 edition of the Birds won 98 games and made it to the ALCS. But after the season, Davey Johnson was replaced by Ray Miller; since then, they have never won more than 79.

With Moffatt away we are relying on you, the readers of Da Box, to provide articles and commentary on the Jays for discussion today.

You earn bonus points for 80s references.

It's Deja Vu All Over Again
And now for something completely different ... let's play a little game. See if you can fill in the specific name or event to which each bracketed number refers.

How Scandinavian of me.

The year 2003 is one that Reds fans would love to forget. The team was beset with injuries, the starting pitching was horrendous, and the team finished only one game above the last place Milwaukee Brewers. This was followed up by the senseless murder of outfielder Dernell Stenson and the death of former owner Marge Schott.

Opening the windows and breathing in petrol
An amateur band rehearsing in a nearby yard
Watching the tele and thinking about your holidays

I was at a party recently and laid out on the coffee table was a passionate letter from a Mariners fan, which I’m going to share with you below. That I just happened to have to write a preview about the Mariners for the Box later that month was one of the great coincidences of my life.

There have been numerous prospect lists published recently by the usual Baseball Websites. Trying to rank some prospects for a forthcoming fantasy draft I got hopelessly confused, so I threw a few sets of results, that were freely available, into a spreadsheet and ranked them. The results seemed interesting enough to share.

Here are the players that the fans peceive as the best and worst fielders in the league.

I tell you something, I know what you're thinking.

While jumping around baseball cyberspace, this juicy article from 1996 was brought to my attention by Doug Pappas, who in turn credits a Primate for the link.

This is the story of how a lowly member of a 22-person ownership group rose to control the Milwaukee Brewers, before moving on to play Commissioner.

Having been born in 1983, I became a baseball fan just in time to watch the Minnesota Twins win the World Series in 1991. It was, in fact, the very first World Series I remember watching. It was thrilling to see my team win, but certainly not quite as thrilling as if, say, I had been a fan of theirs for more than six months.

To greet you with a smile.

When Mark Shapiro succeeded John Hart as General Manager of the Cleveland Indians in 2001, he was faced with a challenge. Hart had overseen several poor drafts and left the prospect cupboard nearly bare. By the time Shapiro took the job, the core of the Indians' championship teams was suffering from attrition - many of the old guard had left via free-agency or soon would. The Indians were at a crossroads: Would Shapiro continue to bring in veterans to prop up an aging core, or would he cash in his chips? Stay tuned.