The final weeks of the baseball season are generally a dreary time for clubs out of contention. If such teams are lucky, they might get to look at a minor league hotshot up for a September callup, or maybe even play the role of spoiler against a playoff contender, but for most teams, there's little reason for celebration as they finish out the schedule. Not so for the Blue Jays, who packed a season's worth of highlights into the final two weeks of September.

A quick rundown:

• Vernon Wells finished with a major league-leading 215 hits, breaking Tony Fernandez's single season hit record.
• Roy Halladay won his club record and major league-leading 22nd game of the season, putting himself back in the driver's seat for the Cy Young Award
• Halladay also picked up his 200th strikeout of the season, a first for a Jays pitcher not named Clemens
• Mike Bordick picked up his 1500th career hit
• Kevin Cash hit his first major league home run
• Carlos Delgado went nuts.

  Consider, in his four-homer game, he:

• Hit his 40th home run of the season
• Broke his own club record with his 138th RBI of the season
• Hit his 300th career home run
• Drove in his 140th RBI of the season
• Hit four home runs - in consecutive at-bats no less. I don't know that any player has ever had a single game in which he surpassed so many milestones. Oh, and for good measure, he ended the season with a grand slam and a gaudy (and major league-leading) 145 RBIs. He also led the league in OPS at 1.019, and put himself back in MVP discussions. Is Delgado the best choice for MVP? Maybe not, but he's certainly not a bad choice.

• As a team, the Jays set new records for most runs (896), doubles (357), tied the team hit record (1580) and, what must be particularly satisfying for J.P. Ricciardi, set a new standard for on-base percentage (.349).

Of course, there was also the bench-clearing incident against Tampa Bay, in which the $17 million dollar first baseman put himself in harm's way to protect the rookie closer. Fun for the fans and team-building. The most encouraging stats at season's end were a won-loss record 10 games over .500, and an attendance figure up 10% from 2002, meaning about 2000 more fans per game.

All of these numbers punctuated a season in a which the Jays proved themselves an exciting team, an offensive team, and most importantly, a good team. There's every reason to believe that the Jays will be able to contend for a playoff spot in 2004.

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