Break out the champagne! Alexis Rios had four hits; Josh Banks had eleven strikeouts and the organization had a winning night.

No need to get uptighter
Come on, you little fighter
And get back up again....

It wasn't pretty, but the Jays will take it. As Spencer Fordin and Mark Zwolinski summarized, Miguel Batista couldn’t match the historic heroics of his former Diamondbacks rotation mate Randy Johnson, who fired a perfect game in Atlanta last night. But Batista did no-hit the Twins through five innings as the Jays held on for a 5-3 victory. Reed Johnson had 3 hits and 2 RBI for the Gray Jays.

How's this for a blast from the past:

I'm beginning to think that there's only so much a hitting coach can do.

Don’t let the fire rush to your head
I've heard the accusation before
And I ain't gonna take any more, believe me.

Game summaries from Geoff Baker, Mike Ganter and Spencer Fordin tell the story: Ted Lilly was homer-prone again, the bullpen allowed the go-ahead runs to score in the 9th, and despite a scrappy performance by the lesser lights on offence, the heart of the order again failed to produce (a collective 1 for 13 last night for Wells/Delgado/Hinske). It’s a theme that’s rapidly coming to look like it could be the Blue Jays’ 2004 highlights video.

It was another bottom-up night for the Blue Jay farm system. Class A Charleston won, High-A Dunedin split a double-header, AA New Hampshire lost a close one, and AAA Syracuse lost by three.

With tonight's game, the Blue Jays will be just about one-quarter the way through the season. If their performance continues at this rate, then they will finish 66-96, or 20 games behind last year's pace. Since the odds against that are phenomenally high, it stands to reason that this team simply has to get better. So maybe the best way to look at it is that tonight's matchup with the Twins (Miguel Batista vs. Johan Santana) marks the end of one truly ugly quarter and the start of a brand new and better one. Aren't companies always telling shareholders to ignore those pesky first-quarter results? There you go. Enjoy the game.

Snake just wrote this fantastic post in the Cheer Club thread, but the idea is so grand that it requires its own thread for planning, organizing and daydreaming:

The draft eligible college hitters are generally regarded as a weak class this year. As opposed to the strength of the college pitchers, as few as a handful of hitters will be selected in round 1 on June 7th. However, there are plenty of gems to be found if you’re willing to mine for them.

Another tough day in the minor leagues. Syracuse and Charleston lost on Sunday to complete losing weeks. New Hampshire lost on Sunday and lost their weekend series with Binghamton. Stubby Clapp only needed six pitches to retire the side.

Since the Cheer Club began operations in earnest this month, we have had a lot of reports of SkyDome "security" personnel acting to repress cheering for the Blue Jays.

In the late 1990s, I personally (along with the people I was attending with) was given instructions several times by ushers to be quiet or face ejection, in response to perfectly clean cheering. I had been under the impression that this was changing; that the team was fully behind the idea of the fans trying to make noise to support the team. I am convinced now that this is no longer the case.

The Toronto Walrus continue to set the pace in the BBFL Alomar division, this week chalking up a 9-2 victory over hannibal's cannibals. The Walrus are now at a .764 winning percentage, proving to be, if memory serves, even more successful than last years oustanding gashouse gorillas. My own Mebion Glyndwr were able to ride the O-Dog to a 12-0 victory over the Horse Field Hammers and second place, taking advantage of a timely off-week from Barry Bonds. AGF are third following a 9-3 win over the Mashers.

Once again, duty intrudes...Nevertheless, here's a quick bite-sized Scout for the three-gamer at the dome with the Central-leading Twinkies.

On to the Advance Scout!

Okay, I couldn't think of anything clever to include in the title of the thread. The Blue Jays are 16-22 after a tough split of their four-game series against the Red Sox, and now face the Minnesota Twins, leading their division by 2 games with the second-best record in the league. Ted Lilly shut down Brad Radke and the Twins at the Metrodome last month in his best outing of the season; he'll need to do it again in the rematch, as the Jays bats are still cold. Slumps and false starts have been the order of 2004, and Toronto still hasn't shown that it's a team to be reckoned with, or even to be particularly concerned about; tonight would be a good time to start changing that.

All of us at Da Box would like to thank Rob Bradford for his great answers in our interview that we published on Friday. Rob and his publisher, Brassey's, were kind enough to allow us to run this excerpt from Chasing Steinbrenner, which will hit bookstores early in June. It's available for pre-order now (click the link above) from Amazon.

Enjoy!