Posted 12:58 PM by Brian
SEARCHING FOR RICK ANKIEL If someone had told me back in March that the Cardinals would basically sit out the September pennant race, I'd have guessed that the team had transmogrified into the late-'90s, McGwire-era Cards: big fat individual numbers surrounded by an emaciated supporting cast. Instead we've basically ended the race by playing some of the most inspired ball in Cardinals history, leaving only a few areas of drama before the postseason starts, namely:

1. Watching that Magic Number at left shrink and shrink.

2. Watching to see who we might play in the playoffs. The contenders for the first round are: L.A., Atlanta, San Fran, or San Diego. We'll know more about how we match up with the Pads and Dodgers after we go head-to-head with them over the next two weeks. Otherwise I'd say it's six/half-dozen with each of them; they worry and unworry me equally.

3. Watching to see what kind of cool numbers the team can compile. Will we win 102 games (the most since 1944)? Will Pujols hit 50 dingers (he's on pace for precisely 50 right now)? How many ribbies will Rolen collect? Can Izzy lead the league in saves? Can the Cards have four 16-game winners (again, haven't done that since 1944)? What about three 40-HR guys? Should be fun stuff to watch.

4. This would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago -- but will Rick Ankiel pitch good, meaningful baseball in a Cardinals uniform again? This is one of the hottest side stories in baseball right now, with most of baseball pulling for the kid for humanitarian reasons alone.

His minor-league numbers are pretty dazzling: 23 strikeouts, 2 walks, an ERA under 1.00, and -- best of all -- he seems to be getting better and stronger the higher he goes up the ladder. Can it continue? Hell, who knows. No one has been able to diagnose what ailed Ankiel to begin with, so it'd be foolish to pretend we know the prescription.

But there are two things that have me more excited than I might normally be. First of all, Ankiel is not only showing good control, but with only two walks in 23.2 innings (against 23 K's), he's showing better control than he ever did. I know I might get arrested here by the Small Sample Size Police, but Ankiel's 0.76 walks-per-nine is better than his previous season low of 2.80. And it's much better than the 4.5 walks-per-nine he had in the major leagues before he went haywire.

The other reason for optimism is that, since his meltdown, Ankiel has occasionally shown flashes of brilliance -- like his 1.34 ERA and 1.85 BB/9 totals in the '01 rookie leagues -- but he's never done this well above A ball, even for one game. You may remember that Ankiel pitched a swell game vs. Randy Johnson at the start of the '01 season. But even then he walked three guys in only five innings.

Obviously, though, there are the usual cautions: Ankiel has pitched only a handful of innings so far, it was against bush-league competition, he's been largely inoculated from an all-out media blitz (which would change if he made it to St. Louie), and, most importantly, we never know when or if Ankiel will be officially "cured." Sadly, it's all too easy to see Rick getting up here and winging a few to the backstop (and no matter how well I gird myself for it, I know it'll feel like a knife to the gut).

But suppose Ankiel comes up here and pitches swimmingly -- what will that tell us? After all, it's only September baseball, without much heat from the pennant race, and Ankiel will most likely be used in comfy, mop-up settings only. So if he passes that test, what about spring training, or next season, or the next time Ankiel is in a stretch-drive game, or in a playoff game? Is his syndrome over, or merely hibernating? Who knows? But it'll be fun to take the plunge and find out.

Posted 12:48 PM by Brian
CARROLL KISSES, MAKES UP Will Carroll sent me a nice email yesterday, clarifying and defending some recent swipes he made at the Cardinals. He goes further with this write-up in today's Under the Knife column:

My pal Brian Gunn of Redbird Nation called me to task for my jabs at the Cardinals' rotation. I'm an admitted Cubs fan, but try hard to stay objective and honestly, I don't hate the Cards. I may not wear my Cards jersey anymore, but that's simply because J.D. Drew moved on. I remain unconvinced about the Cards rotation, but the fact that it has been so successful is testament to Dave Duncan and Walt Jocketty. Jocketty gave Duncan what he works with best: older pitchers with talent who have had mechanical and injury problems. Chris Carpenter is one of the top stories, showing some light in the darkness of labrum statistics. You'll probably remember last August, when I was regularly unconvinced by the Florida Marlins. As far as the staff goes, they'll be better when they get Steve Kline back. He should be back when eligible on September 12th, plenty of time to let Tony La Russa see he's healthy.

Posted 9:23 AM by Brian
SELF-LOVE ITEM OF THE DAY I did an interview with a cool online pub called SportsFan Magazine recently. Hopefully I represented Redbirddom well -- check it out if you get a chance.

Posted 11:53 PM by Brian
BASEBALL BALLET, REVISITED Speaking of grace on the ballfield, our good friend June passes along this apt photo:

Posted 8:53 AM by Brian
A CHANGE OF HEART I got a kick out of this pair of comments --

Pirates manager Lloyd McClendon before Sunday's game: "They're much more talented than we are at this stage of the game, but I enjoy playing the Cardinals. You don't like the losses, obviously, but I really believe the competition has made us a better club. It has elevated our game. I think because of it we're going to be a better team next year."

Pirates manager Lloyd McClendon after Sunday's game: "Quite frankly, I'm tired of talking about St. Louis. I'm glad to see them leave."

Posted 4:24 PM by Brian
BASEBALL BALLET You can't do much to convince someone who's not into sports to fall in love with them, but occasionally I've tried. At times I've found myself arguing with bookish sorts that baseball is like any three-act narrative, with heroes, villains, dramatic tension, and far less predictable endings than you're likely to find in most movies, plays, or novels. Other times I've tried to argue (with women, mostly) that baseball is nothing more than ballet for guys. After all, I don't watch SportsCenter to get the stats or the scores, which I can get more quickly and thoroughly over the Internet. No, I watch them for the highlights, the Web Gems, the look of the ball leaving the bat on a home run, and the entire kinetic thrill of bodies in motion.

There were a number of great things about this weekend -- we swept three from the Bucs, continued our streak of winning road trips, gave most of our starters a rest, saw Pujols go to .300/30 HR/100RBI + for the fourth straight year, improved our record to 42 games over .500, widened our division lead to 15 games, and surpassed our win total from last year. But the real treat about Birdinal baseball these days is that you can sit back and sink into the games without fretting too much about the scoreboard. (That doesn't explain why I chucked a shoe against the wall when the Cards fell in extra innings the other night, but I'm trying to make a point here...) Our comfy lead going into September makes it easier to enjoy the ballet of baseball. So rather than discuss anything that happened on the field this series, hopefully these pix from Yahoo! will speak for me:

Posted 3:09 PM by Brian
PLAYA HATER WATCH Two weeks ago we chronicled a few digs that medhead Will Carroll had taken at the Cardinals. We should probably turn it into a regular feature after this item buried in one of his recent columns:

Is Ankiel the savior for a shaky Cards rotation in the late season?

             Games  Quality Starts

Cardinals     28         17  

Cubs          28         14

Posted 2:52 PM by Brian
FINISHERS Bernie Miklasz passes along these neat stats re: the Cards' success in the late innings:

Through Wednesday, the Cardinals led the National League with 40 comeback wins. From the seventh inning on, they were outhitting opponents .269 to .223 and outhomering them 53-30. They had outscored opponents by 78 runs after the sixth inning, a margin more than twice as high as the next-closest mark in the majors. (The Yankees and Rangers were next, with a 34-run differential). The Cardinals' 213 runs after the sixth were tied with San Francisco for most in the majors, and their 135 runs allowed were the fewest in the majors. By comparison, the 1987 NL champion Cardinals had just a one-run advantage (243-242) after the sixth inning, and the 1982 World Series champion Cardinals were actually outscored by 13 runs after the sixth inning (221-208).

Posted 1:46 PM by Brian
THE BLUE BALL YEARS That was the name my brother Matt gave to this era of Cardinals history, where the team has gone to the postseason in four of the past eight years but hasn't seen their success, er, climax in a World Series victory. (Although perhaps we shouldn't complain too much, as the cases of blue balls in Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston have now advanced into something like gangrene, amputation, and/or death.)

Dan over at Get Up, Baby! now has a cool post up where he compares the starting lineups of our past four division-winning teams (1996, 2000, 2001, and 2002) against this year's model. His conclusion? The '04 Cards are awesome -- but then again, so was that '00 team, what with Big Mac and Thrill at first, Vina's best year in a Cardinal uniform, and Lankford last superlative year in the Lou. Hard not to wonder what may have been if Ankiel had kept his head on straight that year.

Posted 12:43 PM by Brian
REGIONALISM REDUX Last week Eric Gagne said Adrian Beltre won't get recognition as MVP because of East Coast bias, despite the fact that 14 of the last 16 MVPs have played in the Western Division. And just the other day Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated said this about San Diego's Jake Peavy:

He's a bit overlooked this year because he missed a few starts, doesn't have a tremendous win total, and suffers from the usual bias toward teams that play in the Eastern time zone.

   Award    BBWAA Winner (WS)     Shares Winner (WS)      "Bias"



95 AL MVP   Mo Vaughn (24)        Edgar Martinez (32)      East

95 NL MVP   Barry Larkin (30)     Barry Bonds (36)         East

96 AL MVP   Juan Gonzalez (21)    Alex Rodriguez (34)      East

96 NL MVP   Ken Caminiti (38)     Jeff Bagwell (41)        West

97 AL MVP   Ken Griffey (36)      Frank Thomas (39)        West

97 NL MVP   Larry Walker (32)     Piazza (39), Gwynn (39)  East

98 NL Cy    Tom Glavine (23)      Kevin Brown (26)         East

98 AL MVP   Juan Gonzalez (28)    Albert Belle (37)         --

98 NL MVP   Sammy Sosa (35)       Mark McGwire (41)         --

99 AL MVP   Ivan Rodriguez (28)   Roberto Alomar (35)       --

99 NL MVP   Chipper Jones (32)    Jeff Bagwell (37)         --

01 AL Cy    Roger Clemens (19)    Joe Mays (22)             --

01 AL MVP   Ichiro Suzuki (36)    Jason Giambi (38)         --

02 AL MVP   Miguel Tejada (32)    Alex Rodriguez (35)      West

03 NL MVP   Barry Bonds (39)      Albert Pujols (41)       West

Posted 12:36 PM by Brian
THE CARDINALS OF THE KREMLIN There's a good new Cardinals blog out there that I forgot to mention in last week's roundup. It's called The Hunt for a Red October, and it's written by Benjamin Franklin, an 18th-century American statesman and inventor.

Posted 12:31 PM by Brian
DREW IT AGAIN So the Diamondbacks may not be able to sign their #1 pick, Stephen Drew, younger bro of J.D. If Drew isn't signed, he'll go back into the amateur draft, which sets up a potential repeat of 1998...

Posted 10:05 PM by Brian
WHAT IF YOU THREW A BASEBALL GAME AND NO ONE CAME? They say there were 19,000 people watching tonight's contest in Cincy, but I think they used the same counting mechanisms they used in Chicago in 1960. The crowd had to be closer to 19 than 19,000, which lent a weird sense of irreality to the proceedings, like maybe the two teams were playing underwater or something. I swear at one point I heard someone in the stands sneeze.

But unfortunately this one counted, regardless of whether anyone was there to record it. (The scoreboard wasn't working all game, which added to the ghostliness of things.) Each inning I expected something to happen -- a ball to explode off Pujols' bat, or a 500-foot home run by Adam Dunn, or someone to crack open a bottle of that vintage Cardinals Magic -- but the two starting pitchers (who both went the distance, by the way) made sure they suppressed all uprisings.

Carpenter was almost perfect (although unfortunately the operative word is almost). It was the fourth time this year he pitched 8 innings and gave up one or no runs. Only two guys got to second on him all night -- one on an error, the other on a home run trot. The latter was of course Sean Casey, whose jack in the 6th was the only interruption to Carpenter's steady rock-and-fire-rock-and-fire efficiency. All in all, a brilliant performance, just not brilliant enough.

Aaron Harang, on the other hand, was brilliant, from start to finish. It may have been the best performance by a mound opponent this year: 9 innings, only 4 baserunners, 106 pitches, 73 strikes. The most amazing thing was the way he treated our Big Four of Walker, Pujols, Rolen, and Edmonds: collectively oh-for-14 with 4 K's, and only two balls out of the infield. Wow.

He did get a little help along the way. In the 8th inning Renteria hit a bomb to right center that Austin Kearns made a diving, sprawling catch on. And the next batter, Reggie Sanders, got robbed by another diving play, this time by third baseman Felipe Lopez. Two of the best back-to-back grabs I've seen in a long time. At that point you just had to tip your cap to the Reds; they outplayed us, pure and simple.

The real moment of truth for Harang came with two outs in the ninth. Up 'til that point, the Cards were only a Tony Womack away from being no-hit. But Walker's nubber through the infield brought up the final showdown: Big Bad Albert, potential winning run at the dish. The crowd -- all 19 of them -- came alive, sounding more like 19,000 at last. And just like a week ago against Cincy, Pujols ended the game by bouncing out to the left side. Damn Kryptonite.

So the Cards drop a rare road series, and in truth they quite easily could have been swept. (Although, to be fair, the Reds quite easily could have been swept too -- each game was decided by one late-inning run.) I think it's too soon to draw any conclusions about the current mood of this Cardinals team, but they don't look quite as spunky as usual, even with the big come-from-behind win last night. Rolen, for one, looks extremely tired. No hits in 11 ABs in the series, plus an uncharacteristic error. It might be wise to rest him for a game in Pittsburgh before the SoCal niners come to town on Tuesday.

I will say one thing, though: it feels very weird to be fretting about a team that's gone 17-7 on the month.

Posted 4:00 PM by Brian
KAP KONTROVERSY What follows is an authentic, on-the-record phone interview I conducted with Major League Baseball from inside my head:

[phone rings]

MLB: Hello, Major League Baseball speaking.

RBN: A ten-game suspension for Julian Tavarez? Just for having gunk on his cap?

MLB: Who is this?

RBN: Redbird Nation. You don't recognize my voice?

MLB: Sorry, Redbird, you sounded like someone else. As for the stuff on Tavarez's cap, first of all it wasn't just any old gunk --

RBN: -- all right, dirt, whatever.

MLB: No, pine tar. Key difference.

RBN: How so?

MLB: Pine tar is a foreign substance. You can't have it on your cap. Tavarez did, so we suspended him.

RBN: So just having it on your cap is enough to get you busted?

MLB: Check out the rule book. 8.02(b) -- you can't have on your person, or in your possession, any foreign substance. If you do, you're out the game, if not several games.

RBN: I don't get it. Biggio, Thome, Vlad Guerrero -- they all come to the plate with pine tar caked all over their batting helmets. No one tosses them out.

MLB: Because they're not pitchers. 8.02(b) only applies to pitchers.

RBN: I still don't get it. Steve Kline has been in hundreds of games with gunk all over his hat -- Gagne too. Are you sure there isn't a double standard here with Tavarez?

MLB: You're missing the point. The infraction is the foreign substance. Kline's hat is dirty, but that's dirt from the playing field. Totally incidental. Same with Gagne and his sweat-stained cap.

RBN: Okay, so what is it about this pine tar? Isn't it something that only helps batters?

MLB: It can help pitchers too -- not much with the fastball, but you put it on a breaking pitch and you'll see the ball do some crazy things. Altering the grip or shape of a baseball will always be an advantage to the pitcher.

RBN: Okay, so I get all that. But hasn't Tavarez had this stuff on his cap all year? In fact, this was the third time the umps inspected him. Presumably he had the same caps, same gunk, and yet this was his first ejection. What gives?

MLB: There were a few differences this time. First of all, Tavarez and La Russa admitted to Joe West that the substance on his cap was pine tar or resin or some similar foreign substance.

RBN: Exactly. Grime and resin and pine tar -- all that gunk we were talking about -- collects on an unwashed cap over the course of a year, just by happenstance, same as the dirt on Kline's cap or the sweat on Gagne's. By admitting this, surely La Russa and Tavarez weren't fessing up to the crime of doctoring baseballs. They were fessing up to the crime of having incidental gunk on his cap.

MLB: Again, it doesn't matter -- like I said before, just having an illegal substance on your person is enough to get you kicked out. When we found a nail file on Joe Niekro a number of years back, or a thumbtack on Kevin Gross, we didn't need to get into the intetionality of the pitcher or anything like that. We didn't even need to find doctored baseballs. All we needed was the offending object, and in this case all we needed was Tavarez's gunky hat.

RBN: Now, wait a minute -- if that were true you'd have the hat itself. But you gave it back to Tavarez.

MLB: Joe West saw it. So did the rest of our umpiring crew. That's enough for us.

RBN: That's enough to throw Tavarez out of the game, but is it enough to suspend him? I mean, if someone's, say, corking his bat, you'd certainly want to have the bat and you'd want it analyzed. Why then don't you have Tavarez's cap?

MLB: Ask him. Didn't he throw it into the stands?

RBN: You gave it back to him. He's free to do whatever he wants with it.

MLB: But don't you find it odd that he got rid of it so quickly? It's like flushing the dime bag down the toilet before the cops come.

RBN: Well, if you want to extend the analogy you guys basically sentenced a guy to jail because you heard water swishing around in the toilet. There's no evidence of a serious crime.

MLB: We do have evidence. We have baseballs he doctored.

RBN: When? You tossed him while he was throwing warm-up pitches.

MLB: Yeah, but he threw the inning before that. We have those baseballs, and they do show the presence of a foreign substance.

RBN: Where are these baseballs? He threw only 5 pitches -- one was fouled out of a play and is presumably on someone's mantelpiece right now. Another was hit in play and easily could have collected pine tar from a player's bat. So you're talking at the most three questionable baseballs, and that would be if the ump threw out a new baseball on every single pitch. I don't buy it. In fact, I don't think you have any baseballs.

MLB: Okay, maybe we don't.

RBN: What?

MLB: Nothing.

RBN: Dude, I totally heard you admit you were lying.

MLB: No, I just, you know, sneezed, and by coincidence it probably came out sounding like human speech.

[Redbird Nation sighs]

MLB: Look, we do know that the balls Tavarez threw were doing some wicked things in that game. Talk to Lloyd McClendon. His guys told him Tavarez was throwing a 90-mph knuckleball.

RBN: Which guys? Tavarez faced only one batter that game. McClendon was trying to mess with Tavarez's head and now he's just covering his own ass by making up witnesses. Besides, McClendon himself said last year that Tavarez doesn't doctor his pitches.

MLB: Right, when he was his manager and looking out for him. Now that he's on the other team, he has an interest in telling the truth.

RBN: Why do you assume that? Doesn't he have just as much interest in making shit up? Here's what I think: I think you guys don't like that schtik Tavarez pulled by leaving the field and throwing his arms around the home plate ump; I think you don't like that he threw his cap into the stands when your own umps should have confiscated it; and I think you just plain don't like Julian Tavarez. His crime is alot like Driving While Black -- Pitching While Flaky. So you threw the book at him.

MLB: Nonsense. We don't consider the personality of anyone we suspend.

RBN: Well, perhaps you should. I mean, have you heard Tavarez talk about this incident? He makes sense.

MLB: Yeah, Julian Tavarez always makes sense. Same guy who called fans in San Francisco "a bunch of assholes and faggots." Same guy who slammed an umpire to the ground about seven or eight years ago.

RBN: Okay, I'll admit -- Julian has a few screws loose. But the man said he didn't doctor baseballs and he swore on the heads of his own children! Now, forgive me if this is some kind of gross stereotype, but it's been my experience that when Latino men start swearing on the lives of their family they're telling the truth.

MLB: Look, even if Tavarez is more-or-less innocent, even if he had good motives, we have to uphold the rule, and the rules say you can't have gunk on your cap.

RBN: Probably because you don't want the MLB logo obscured for merchandising.

MLB: What, are you a Marxist now?

RBN: No, I'm just upset that there seems to be a double standard. I don't believe you guys have proof of wrongdoing, you only have one grimy cap. What's more, by precedent you've always let this stuff slide in the past. That's a dangerous place to be -- sorta like the Pine Tar Incident twenty years ago, where baseball decided to crack down on something that it had always winked at. According to the letter of the law, they were right. According to the practice of the law, they were wrong. That's called bad policy and, again, a very dangerous place to be.

MLB: You're being hyperbolic. You know how these things work -- we hand down a ten-game suspension, Tavarez appeals, we reduce it to seven games, and by that time it's September, the Cards have wrapped up the division, and you're more concerned with how Rick Ankiel pitches out of the pen than any of this rigamarole. So let it go.

RBN: I would be able to let it go if it weren't for Stinkhat.

MLB: Who's Stinkhat?

RBN: Steve Kline. Krazy Kliner. Says he won't wear his greasecap now for fear of getting busted by the boys upstairs.

MLB: So what?

RBN: That cap's like Samson's hair, man. It gives Kline power and courage. If he gives up a salami to Derrek Lee in the NLCS, I'm blaming you.

MLB: Jesus, I gotta go...

RBN: Okay. Thanks for talking to us. By the way, can you score me any good seats for the playoffs?

[click]

Posted 7:21 PM by Brian
SWEET RELIEF There. Now that's more like it. Tonight was iffy, bumpy, and occasionally ugly -- the winning run scored on a wild pitch -- but in the end the Redbirds came out on top. So now let's do that thing where I make a series of glib comments:

                            IN   ER  HR  BB  K   ERA

Woody vs. Cincinnati       31.3  19   8  14  29  5.46

Woody vs. everyone else   117.3  46   7  36  73  3.53

       AVG   OBP   SLG

ATL   .162  .205  .204

STL   .163  .201  .206

Posted 12:01 AM by Brian
ROLEN'S TRAVELS When the story of Scott Rolen is told at the end of his career, hopefully at some podium in Cooperstown, it'll be told in two parts: his years in Philadelphia will end in a haze of rancor and misunderstanding, and his years in St. Louis will seem like one big warm embrace.

But the real story isn't so cleanly bifurcated. As this Post-Dispatch article suggests, Scotty was far from happy his first season wearing the Birds on the Bat:

Rolen admits 2003 bothered him... Abstaining from specifics, [he] said, "There were things that were allowed to slide that I didn't understand. At some point, you look around and ask, 'What the heck's going on?' Right now, guys are having fun coming to the ballpark. It's a game and everybody's having a great time. Last year it was like a job. What shoe was going to fall next? What's going to happen? Is somebody going to get upset in the clubhouse?... Last season was not comfortable. It was not fun."

Posted 10:51 PM by Brian
FUN WITH P/PA! You know it's a slow Monday when the Cards don't have a game and you find yourself looking at the pitches-per-plate-appearance numbers over at ESPN's sortable stats page. The Cards have three of the 20 most patient hitters in the league: Jim Edmonds (4th in P/PA), Rolen (14th), and... Tony Womack? Yup. He comes in at #18 in terms of pitches per plate appearance.

Now, this doesn't mean that T-Dub is drawing a lot of base on balls. He's on pace for only 43 in 145 games, and his walk rate is the same as it was in 2002, his last full season of play. But luckily he's sporting the highest BA, OBP, and SLG of his entire career, and has been one of the more productive second basemen in the league (although that's partly due to injuries to other 2Bmen like Marcus Giles and Junior Spivey).

But the reason I checked out the P/PA numbers to begin with is because I was interested in Albert Pujols. He set a goal before the season to draw 100 walks, but he's on track to fall short of the mark. Plus I've noticed that his strikeouts are up and his walks are down since the All-Star break:

                  K/100 PA    BB/100 PA

Pre-All Star        6.6         13.6

Post-All Star      10.1         10.1

Posted 5:00 PM by Brian
EDGAR 11, BUCS 4 For awhile it seemed like this game might be like Saving Private Ryan, with all the good stuff in the beginning, but Edgar and Walker and Co. provided us with a few late fireworks to cap off a nice third act. Some notes:

                         Games    Grand Slams

Larry Walker, MTL/COL    1,845         5

Larry Walker, STL          13          2

Posted 2:46 PM by Brian
ODDS AND SODS Here's a grabbag of stuff filling up a folder on my virtual desktop:

Posted 1:10 PM by Brian
ANTHONY REYES WATCH Last summer we followed the exploits of Danny Haren during his trek through the minors. Now we can follow Cardinal-to-be Anthony Reyes (not to be confused with recent bullpen addition Al Reyes). Last night in Tennessee, Anthony struck out 11 in 7 shuout innings, and added a home run of his own for good measure. Over his last two starts covering 14 innings, Reyes has struck out 26 guys against only one walk. It's becoming more and more obvious why the Cards felt comfortable dealing Chris Narveson to Colorado -- Reyes is our future hotshot now.

Posted 4:54 PM by Brian
CAP FLAP The latest brouhaha down at Busch is absolutely priceless. I can't decide what's the best part. Is it Tavarez putting his arm around home plate ump Ron Kulpa and suggesting they grab a beer after the game? Or is it Tavarez dumping all his caps on McClendon's desk? Or is it McClendon storming out of his office, slamming the door, and weepily cutting Tony La Russa's photos out of his friendship collage?

Didn't I tell you that Joe West has to be the star of every game he works? He kicked out Tavarez just for the hell of it. After all, if there was an illegal substance on the cap it would have been confiscated.

Posted 3:35 PM by Flynn
What I'd do if I were Tony LaRussa....

Give Larry Walker this Sunday off. Joe West and his mysterious strike zone will be back behind the plate Sunday. Given Larry's abominable performance Thursday (0-5 with three Ks and two GIDPs) it seems wise to just keep him away from any plate with Mr. Illegal Pitch behind it.

Enter Ray King in a contest sponsored by these guys. Bet on Ray. Clean up.

Use Cal Eldred more. His performance has picked up significantly recently, which coincides with an increased workload. The team apparently isn't going to pick up any right-handed bullpen help (and the marquee September call-up is a certain enigmatic lefthander) so it would seem prudent to keep Eldred in top form down the stretch. One would presume that he, Izzy, Tavarez, and one of the starters would make up the right-handed side of the postseason bullpen.

Take and hour and watch the Sklar brothers hilarious show where they campaign to get Jose Oquendo in the Hall of Fame. Then, join the movement. He did, after all, strike out Deion Sanders looking.

Use Marquis as a pinch hitter. Just a few times because it's cool.

Understand that everyone knows I wear glasses. Taking them off and putting them in my shirt when I run on the field fools nobody.

"Call" on Renteria every time he stretches his arm above his head during a game. This happens about once every minute so the hilarity should be non-stop. Imagine "Yes, Edgar, do you have something to tell the class?" Every time. Oh, that would be great. And surely Edgar would call his agent and ask to re-sign right away. I'm a funny manager guy.

Hopefully I'd have already done this, but assure Lankford he will be back on the team Sept. 1. I'm guessing this has happened and was the only reason ray accepted the minor league assignment.

Just drop the posing and fly down to Houston this weekend and kick Dusty Baker's ass. Dusty's kind of big, though. Better bring Dunc.

Write this on the underside of my cap - "Infielders cannot just go play the outfield. This is the majors. It's hard."

Secure a visa to visit whatever planet Roger Cedeno seems to escape to during some of his at bats. Go there; convince Roger to return to Missouri. Hope for the best.

Disappear from the dugout mid-game and show up in the Fox Sports Booth to whale away on Al Hrabosky with a fungo bat. (Sub in Jeff Brantley for Hrabosky if it's an ESPN game.) All that "He's not Herzog so he sucks" crap would end right there.

Three words - Nurture The Mullet.

Posted 12:02 AM by Brian
CARDSAPALOOZA I've heard some people complain that the Cards aren't getting the attention they deserve this year. But in this day and age it's nearly impossible for a team with the best record in baseball not to get a lot of press, and to my eyes it seems the Cards have had their fair share: they've been the Fox and ESPN games of the week many times, their game highlights frequently kick off SportsCenter, and they've been #1 in every power ranking I've seen for weeks on end.

But if you're still not convinced, take a look at the outpouring of love for the Birdinals all around the web recently. First there's Peter Gammons' homage to GM Walt Jocketty, which has this interesting quote from Tony La Russa:

"There may not be anyone else who has brought the types of star players to one team the way Walt has. It started in 1996 when he got Todd Stottlemyre to make us a contender, and it's gone on and on to Mark McGwire and Darryl Kile, Jim Edmonds, Rolen, Edgar Renteria... Star players, star people."

It is Ernie Els-like, you wonder how the ball travels so far when he swings with seemingly so little effort and force.

Posted 9:44 PM by Brian
NOT OUR NIGHT This was a strange one. Scott Rolen made two errors, one a dropped popup and one right through his legs. Larry Walker came up four times after a Tony Womack single -- twice he whiffed, twice he grounded into a DP. And the Cards got a dramatic two-out, game-tying home run from Reggie Sanders in the bottom of the ninth, then turned around and dropped the game in extra innings. It was their fourth loss in a row to the Pirates. Very strange.

This is not to say the Bucs didn't deserve to win. Oliver Perez was on tonight, routinely ratcheting it up to 96 mph on the radar gun. He's probably one of the ten best pitchers in the NL at this point, and, at only 23 years old, figures to be a major thorn in the Cardinals' side for years to come. This is especially disconcerting given his awful facial hair (is there anything worse than high-maintenance stubble?).

I don't have much more to say about this game, but I will say this: Joe West, who worked home plate tonight, is just about the worst umpire in all of baseball. (I'd put him second from the bottom, just ahead of Jerry Crawford.) It's bad enough that West has no discernible strike zone, even worse that he has to make himself the star of every game he works. He baits players, holds grudges, goes out of his way to make "startling" calls (I didn't see the illegal pitch call he made against Oliver Perez, but I'm betting he made it up just to show everyone who's boss). Last May, West called out Scott Rolen for failing to tag up from third base on a flyball, but the replays showed that Rolen clearly left on time. As I wrote back then, West is "the type of smug, complacent ump who gets so bored that he needs to insert himself into the action now and again." I'd put him in the same category as small-town cops and high school administrators -- petty tyrants who throw their weight around simply because they can.

Posted 6:42 PM by Brian
SO FAR SO GOOD Dan at Get Up, Baby! takes a look at Rick Ankiel's first start in Double A. Not bad, Rick. Not bad at all...

Posted 9:15 PM by Brian
PASS THE MIC A few weeks ago SI.com ran a piece by Tom Verducci in which he picked his favorite baseball broadcasters of all time. I can’t complain much about his choices – personally I’d’ve picked Jack Buck over Harry Caray for play-by-play, but beyond that, who am I to say? I mean, I’ve never even heard Red Barber or Ernie Harwell or Curt Gowdy for more than ten seconds in a row.

So I thought it might be fun to do the flipside of this article. But rather than draw up a list of my least favorite broadcasters, I’ll give you a list of my least favorite broadcasterisms – on-air tics, opinions, and idiocies that drive me up a wall. At first I thought I'd do a Top Ten list, but that's sort of a clam. Besides, I know you're busy, so instead I present to you my 9 Baseball Broadcast Pet Peeves, in no particular order:

1. No one sucks.

Announcers often seem like they're covering a Little League game -- every hitter is dangerous, every pitcher has good stuff, and the newest player on the roster is a great pickup who gets a honeymoon period for at least a year.

But the main beneficiaries of broadcaster largesse are veterans coasting by on reputation alone. Just tonight Al Hrabosky and Dan McLaughlin went on and on about what a fine pitcher Danny Graves was, even though he was getting hit hard, and even though he hasn't been sharp for two years now. In the same way, Jeff Bagwell is considered a top-shelf first baseman, despite a steady drop-off in value.

Baseball announcers rely on rep particularly when it comes to glove men. Most guys in the booth don't know how to discuss defense beyond throwing around numbers of errors and excessively lauding certified Gold Glove winners. This generosity toward glove men sometimes bleeds over to entire glove teams. The goofiest example of this? Earlier this year Chip Carey intoned, "The Cardinals, as usual, terrific infield defense: Rolen, Luna, Womack, and Mabry." Okay, Rolen, sure, he's terrific, but then Luna? Wom -- ? Huh?

Sometimes announcers go way out of their way to stroke the hometown players, for no particular reason. Take this comment about Brad Lidge from earlier this year, courtesy of Houston color man Bill Brown:

"Only 1 out of 6 in save opportunities last year, but that’s deceptive, because your middle reliever is usually facing the heart of the order in the 8th inning, and many times your team regroups to come back and win."

Hernandez: Do you know how hard it is to hit .352?

Healy: Well, the argument against that is that Bonds gets a lot less chances to make outs.

The Anaheim Angels had just scored a bunch of runs with two outs in their game against the Chicago White Sox Thursday when ESPN flashed a graphic saying the Angels score 40 percent of their runs with two outs. "Uh," thought I. "Is that a lot or a little?" I mean, it seems to me that a pretty healthy percentage of runs are going to score with two outs. There are only three possibilities -- no outs, one out or two outs -- so if everything were distributed evenly 33.3 percent of all runs would score with two outs. And since it sometimes takes a while to get runners around the bases, it makes sense that more than a third of the runs are going to score after two are gone…
Forty percent just didn't seem that high to me, but analyst Buck Martinez launched into a lecture about how that stat reflects the Angels' scrappy personality, that they never give up on an inning, etc. and so on. It was a measure of their character, he said.

As it turned out, at the beginning of that game the Angels had scored 39.3% of their runs with two outs. The AL average was 37%. Evidently that 2% difference was enough to prove whatever point Buck Martinez wanted to make about the Angels' tenacity, a view he probably held regardless of what the numbers said.

6. The Myth of Continuous Motion

I don't know what to call this one exactly, but it's definitely a pet peeve. It's when announcers linger over some mistake -- usually an error or a guy thrown out on the bases -- and harp on it as the key to everything that happens afterwards.

Example: August 6th, Cards vs. Mets on FSN. Matt Morris leads off the inning by coasting into second on a throwing error by Kaz Matsui. Marlon Anderson pinch runs, and So Taguchi bunts him over. And the Mets broadcaster, Ralph Kiner, gripes, “So instead of two outs, now there’s a runner on third one out.”

Wait a minute -- why did Kiner presume two outs? Didn't the whole inning change after the error? Isn't that what set up the Cards sacrificing out #1? But Kiner wouldn't stop harping on it, and it really got on my nerves. The fact is, you can't just hypothetically extract one play and assume that everything else would proceed unaltered. Every play in baseball begets every other play. And yet mark my words: the next time a guy hits a home run after a caught stealing, you'll never hear the end of it, even though the hitter probably got a fat pitch precisely because of the dude who got gunned down on the bases.

7. Do the Hustle

Al Hrabosky recently: “You gotta love Marlon Anderson – first-ball fastball hitter.” No, actually I don’t gotta love that. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like briskly played games, I like infield hits, and I like guys who sprint out of the box on a dead run (are you as amazed as I am these days at the number of guys standing and admiring their doubles off the wall?).

I'll admit that hustle is more exciting than, say, sloth. But even more exciting than hustle are wins. Nonetheless, announcers still tend to reward spunk and aggressiveness, regardless of the context. If a guy is running all the way -- even it means he goes knee-first into an outfield wall, as Jim Edmonds did last year during a 12-3 blowout -- the boys in the booth will give him an A for effort. As Joe Sheehan once wrote,

Posted 8:51 PM by Brian
JACKPOT Okay, this is getting ridiculous. The Cardinals are now at a point where if they play .500 ball for the rest of the season, they'll win 100 games. 100 games! They've won in the triple digits only once in the past 36 years -- only twice in the last sixty years -- and now, with seven weeks left in the season, it's just ours for the taking? What did we do to deserve this? Did the entire city of St. Louis lead the league in puppies saved, or volunteer minutes at the soup kitchen? Or is this some big set-up? Is Someone Upstairs telling us to sit down and enjoy it just so He can pull the chair out from under us?

I don't even care anymore. The ride could end tomorrow and I'd still be thankful for all the thrills this team has given us. Take tonight's game. I missed the first five and a half innings, and turned on the TV to hear these words from Joe Buck:

"Two outs now, so it'll be up to Matheny."

And I'm thinking, screw Tinkers to Evers to Chance -- those are the saddest of possible words: "It'll be up to Matheny." Matheny, of course, bounced into a force out. And from what I could gather from the scoreboard, it seemed like it just wasn't the Cardinals' night.

For starters, Brandon Claussen -- who had gotten bombed for 7 runs in only 3 innings his last outing -- was pitching a whale of a game. This was no mean feat, especially when you consider that Claussen is a lefty and we have guys who do this against southpaws:

           AVG   OBP   SLG

Walker    .357  .500  .548

Pujols    .400  .490  .800

Rolen     .397  .543  .706

Edmonds   .329  .398  .598

Renteria  .444  .510  .700

Mabry     .359  .435  .564

Posted 8:05 PM by Brian
THE BOYS OF BRUMMER: THE ANSWERS Let's forget for a moment about tonight's ho-hum 10-5 win down at Busch, and instead take a stroll into the past. Last Saturday my brother and I posed a few trivia questions about the '82 Cardinals. Here are the answers:

1. There are two Redbirds whose '82 season was their only season with the club. Who are they?

ANSWER: Kelly Paris and Steve Mura

Neither Paris nor Mura played in the postseason. Paris was traded in the offseason to the Reds for the immortal Tim Strichek, while Mura was plucked by the White Sox in the free-agent compensation draft and won only one more game in the bigs.

2. If Joaquin Andujar hadn't been able to pitch Game 7 of the World Series because of his injured knee, who would have started in his place?

ANSWER: Dave LaPoint

I don't know if LaPoint would have dropped the ball in Game 7 of that Series, but he certainly did in Game 4. The Cards took a four-run lead on the Brewers into the seventh inning, but LaPoint bobbled a shovel pass from Keith Hernandez, the Brewers ended up batting around, and before you knew it the series was tied. Afterwards Herzog fumed about the dropped ball by the portly LaPoint, "If it was a cheeseburger he wouldn’t have dropped it!"

3. In the middle of the season, Gussie Busch's wife asked which Cardinal to get her bags at the Grand Hyatt in New York, mistaking him for a bellhop?

ANSWER: Tito Landrum

The other anecdote you hear about Landrum -- which still makes the rounds in St. Louis -- is that he had an affair with Jack Buck's wife Carole. Uhh... doubtful. My favorite memory of Tito is from Game 4 of the '85 NLCS, when he collected two hits in one inning vs. the Dodgers.

4. Which former Cardinal served up Willie McGee's first major league hit?

ANSWER: Al Hrabosky

McGee came into this game as a pinch hitter against the Mad Hungarian and promptly drove in Keith Hernandez and Gene Tenace.

5. Complete this quote from Joaquin Andujar: "You can't worry if it's cold; you can't worry if it's hot; you only worry if you get sick, because..."

ANSWER: The complete quote is "You can't worry if it's cold; you can't worry if it's hot; you only worry if you get sick, because if you don't get well, you die."

So true.

6. Keith Hernandez tried unsuccessfully to block his '83 trade to the Mets. To which team did he successfully block a trade the day before?

ANSWER: The Houston Astros

I have no idea how this went down, but that's the way it was reported in the book Whitey's Boys. If anyone has any details, please send them along.

7. Three members of the '82 squad still reside in the Lou. Who are they?

ANSWER: Bob Forsch, Ozzie Smith, and David Green

8. There were 17 pitches in the '82 season in which the Birds tried a suicide squeeze. How many were successful?

ANSWER: Fourteen

Amazing. Of the three misses, two were fouls and only one was an out. People downplay "the little things" these days, but back then -- when the you could finish above .500 by scoring under four runs per game -- those successful squeeze plays were much more potent.

9. Losing 5-4 in the ninth inning of game 2 of the World Series, which Brewer swung and missed a fastball on a hit-and-run, so that the runner was caught stealing?

ANSWER: Robin Yount

But Yount didn't miss many that year. His '82 season was the very best individual season of my entire baseball childhood (I became a serious fan around '79 or so). In fact, I don't think anyone bested Yount's '82 season until Barry Bonds in '93. McGwire probably passed him in '98, then Bonds turned around and passed him in '01. And I'm not sure anyone in my lifetime will surpass that season (unless it's Bonds himself).

10. What pitcher did the Redbirds beat 14-3 on opening day in '82?

ANSWER: Nolan Ryan

Ryan righted himself to have a pretty good 1982, but check out this article if you want a fun read about the bad luck he experienced a few years later.

11. Which member of the squad has a son in the Braves minor league system?

ANSWER: Tom Herr

His son Aaron plays for the Braves' AA affiliate in Greeneville. By the way, does anyone remember how often Jay Randolph, the Cards' old TV broadcaster, used to mention Herr's hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania?

12. Which Cardinal yelped during the World Series victory celebration, "Hooo-ee! I been to two county fairs and a goat roast, and I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this!"

ANSWER: Darrell Porter

You can find this tidbit (and more!) at the post I had the most fun ever putting together, The Greatest Moments in (Recent) Cardinals History, Parts 1, 2, and 3.

13. Dave LaPoint stumbled into the Cards' hotel lobby at 3 a.m. during a road trip to find who teaching a bellman how to throw a forkball?

ANSWER: Cards' pitching coach Hub Kittle

As long as I'm linking to old Redbird Nation pieces, here's our ode to Hub after he passed away earlier this year.

14. Had the Angels defeated the Brewers in Game 5 of the ALCS and advanced to the series, which pitcher would have faced Bob Forsch in Game 1 of the World Series?

ANSWER: Ken Forsch

Can you imagine??? That would have made the cover of Sports Illustrated, People Magazine, and Der Spiegel all at once.

15. Which Cardinal has performed in three plays at the Muny?

ANSWER: Ozzie Smith

In one of those plays he starred as the Wizard in "The Wizard of Oz." I kid you not.

16. When the '82 Cards clinched the NL East on September 27th, how long was their longest losing streak?

ANSWER: Three games

Right after clinching, the Cards had a four-game losing streak, their longest of the season up to that point.

17. David Green now owns a successful business that does what?

ANSWER: Grooms dogs

That detail tickles me, especially considering Green's hard road in the majors (after problems with alcohol, as well as constant fear for his family back in war-torn Nicaragua, Green's playing career was considered a bust).

18. Which member of the '82 team appeared in the most World Series in his career?

ANSWER: Lonnie Smith

Lonnie went five times, with the Phillies in '80, the Cards in '82, the Royals (dang!) in '85, and the Braves in '91 and '92. He was pretty good in those Series too, popping four home runs, but he's best known for a faux pas he made in Game 7 of the '91 Series. He took off from first on a hit-and-run with no one out in the 8th, but didn't score on Terry Pendleton's double because Chuck Knoblauch deked him into thinking he was taking the relay. Lonnie was stranded at third and the Twins went on to win the game 1-0 in 10.

Incidentally, the other members of the '82 Cards to win rings with other teams: Gene Tenace ('72-'74 A's), George Hendrick ('72 A's), Tito Landrum ('83 Orioles), Doug Bair ('84 Tigers), Dane Iorg ('85 Royals), and Keith Hernandez ('86 Fucking Mets).

19. Who used to come to the ballpark early to learn a slidestep change from Dave LaPoint?

ANSWER: Jim Kaat

The amazing thing about that is that LaPoint was 22 at the time and Kaat was 43. That's about how old LaPoint is now.

20. Every winter, which Cardinal pops in tapes of the Birdinals' World Series wins and watches them again?

ANSWER: Ken Oberkfell

One time my Dad and my brothers sat next to Ken Oberkfell's parents at a ballgame. They had driven from central Illinois and were literally straight off the farm. Supposedly they were also the nicest folks you could possibly imagine, just thrilled that their son had made good in the bigs. Add in the fact that Obie still gets fired up by our '82 champion team and I think that earns him a spot in the Redbird Nation Hall of Fame.

Posted 9:37 PM by Brian
SLOPPY SECONDS There was a sense coming into tonight's game that the Cards were getting a little rudderless. They had just dropped two of three, with both losses among our sloppiest games on the season -- first Thursday's pratfall in Florida, then Saturday's clunker, which featured Jason Marquis' worst start in over two months, a key flyball lost in the sun, and a late blown lead.

Tonight's game figured to be more of the same. Danny Haren was pitching, the Cubs were making it awfully easy to coast for a few games, and during the pregame show ESPN's Rece Davis said that the Braves saw this series as an NLDS preview whereas Jim Edmonds thought it might be a good chance for the players to pad their stats. Okay, that wasn't exactly how Rece put it, but that was the gist of it.

But if there's one lesson we've learned about this Cardinals squad, it's that they're virtually slump-proof. And oddly enough, it was the Braves who looked like they were sleepwalking tonight. They bobbled a few balls, threw wildly a couple times, threw to the wrong base at least three times, and allowed Reggie Sanders to take second after the Braves infield fell into mass hypnosis following a foul pop-out -- a true stolen base if there ever was one. In the second inning alone the Tomahawks gave the Birdos about 12 extra outs.

You'd like to think the Cards would have won this game even without the Christmas gifts -- after all, they did get two moon shots from Rolen and a home run by Pujols (one of the rare players who can go deep even when he gets cheated on his swing). But the early lead did wonders for Danny Haren's confidence. He looked a bit scattershot early on, but after the second he was able to come right after hitters, walking no one and bringing high heat all evening long. All in all, it was a good win and a surprisingly effective road trip. Some additional notes:

            AVG   OBP   SLG

Furcal     .390  .429  .542

Giles      .341  .362  .682

C. Jones   .340  .478  .660