MARCHANT MADNESS AT THE TIGERS

Driving over from Clearwater to Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, the traffic was so light  I credited it to the Good Friday influence until I found out it's not a holiday in the States and that all the schools were open and everyone was at work. In fact, I got to Lakeland so quickly that I was thinking about what I was going to write in today's column and zipped right past the exit, turning around at the Polk City exit some 10 miles down the road. Otherwise it would have been under an hour. The highlight of the drive was listening to my regular hip-hop station where they had some sort of a Good Friday promotion where a staffer carrying something heavy tried to walk through the town of Clearwater on the Gulf to Bay route as a tribute to Jesus' stations of the cross on the original good Friday. During the definitely politically incorrect show the host received a call from the staffer who said he couldn't go on that he had fallen three times and he was done. He said he was calling from a Burger King. The host called him out, saying "Jesus didn't have no Burger King." That promotion went about as well as the infamous Thanksgiving turkey drop on WKRP in Cincinnati.

Before the game, the Jays sent Lance Carter to minor league camp for reassignment. Making the trip to play the Tigers was a handful of the system's top prospects including No. 1 from last June, Kevin Ahrens and young shortstops Justin Jackson, selected 48th overall, and Jonathan Diaz, 12th round of 2006.

LINEUPS:

Jays: Reed Johnson cf, Shannon Stewart lf, Alex Rios rf, Rod Barajas 1b; Matt Watson dh, John McDonald ss, Hector Luna 3b, Sal Fasano c, Ryan Klosterman 2b, Jesse Litsch p.

Tigers: Curtis Granderson cf, Ivan Rodriguez c, Gary Sheffield dh, Magglio Ordonez rf, Miguel Cabrera 3b, Carlos Guillen 1b, Jaque Jones lf, Ryan Raburn 2b, Brandon Inge ss, Dontrelle Willis p.