It is Thanksgiving on this side of the border. Me I'm thankful that a nice free-range turkey gave it's life to make for a great meal for me and my family. I'm thankful for my family and for friends. Maybe not quite so thankful for the 'friend' that brought over a couple of crayfish for my fish tank. Last night my youngest came and said 'one of the crayfish has climbed on the other one. A quick look at crayfishworld.com and yep, they was mating. So in 4 to 6 weeks there could be 200 little crayfish. But they will be going back to my 'friend' before that.

I'm also thankful that the playoffs have been so good, except for last night's game, and thankful that I have a nice new tv to watch the games on. I'm thankful to get to play in this little sandbox with Hugo, it is at lot of fun. And I'm thankful for the people that have been coming to the site and that the number of visitors has been coming up. We had the best August, the best September and are well on the way to the best October, for number of visitors, in Bluebird Banter's short history .

Also today is Tim Crabtree's 39th birthday. Tim was drafted in the second round of the 1992 draft. He made it to the Jays in June of 1995. He appeared in 31 game in relief and had a 3.09 ERA. In 1996 he came out of the pen 53 times, had a 5-3 record with 2 saves and a 2.54 ERA. He came in 7th in the Rookie of the Year vote that year. In 1997 his ERA climbed to 7.08 in 37 appearances.

After the 1997 he was trade to Texas for Kevin Brown.....but unfortunately not Kevin Brown the starting pitcher but Kevin Brown the catcher. Kevin didn't really do much for the Jays, in 1998 he played in 52 games and had 110 at bats, though his numbers in those at bat compare favorably with Rod Barajas' numbers from last season. He hit .264/.320/.400 with 2 homers and 15 RBI. The next season he got into just 2 games and then went on to Milwaukee and Boston.

Crabtree had a couple of good seasons for the Rangers playing in 64 and 68 games with ERAs of 3.59 and 3.46. But in 2000 his ERA jumped to 5.15 and 2001 it was 6.56 in 21 games. After that he bounced around from the Dodgers to the Brewers back to the Rangers and then to the Tigers but never made it to the Majors again.

When he was good he was a good setup man out of the pen but then he mixed in some pretty lousy seasons in his short career. Anyway Happy 39th Tim, hope you have a good one.