The Baseball Desert's "Optimist Of The Day" award goes to Toronto's Reed Johnson, who thought he could boldly go where no man had gone before. He challenged Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki on a single hit to right field and was gunned down by one of Ichiro's patented lasers as he slid into third base. Full marks for trying, Reed, but, next time, be happy with one base...

Other defensive gems included Desi Relaford coming from out of nowhere to make a great catch at the wall in Kansas City - it was such an unlikely catch that Derek Jeter had already gone from first to third when the ball fell into Relaford"s glove, thus giving the Royals an 'easy' double play when Relaford threw back to first to double off Jeter.

Thanks should go to Barry Bonds (and it's not often you'll hear me saying that about The Baseball Desert's least-favourite player) for demonstrating the point made on Monday that individual exploits are all well and good, but sometimes count for nothing in a team game - Bonds hit career homers nos. 649 and 650 last night, but it wasn't enough to help the Giants beat the Mets. QED.