Vivaelbirdos poster Brock20 found this video of a kid, all of about four years old, doing imitations of the batting stances of several Cardinals. He’s got them cold–check out the swing and follow-through on Pujols–and the deadly home run stare. Hard to believe a four-year-old can mimic that ice-cold look, but he does. It’s uncanny. His Jimmy Edmonds is really good, too.
Meanwhile, his kid sister sings “Row Row Row Your Boat” in the background.
Opening Day is getting close.
Brrrr. It’s very, very cold here.
So why not warm up with the best headline I’ve seen in a long, long time? From yesterday’s New York Times:
Three Weeks until Pitchers and Molinas
Now that’s a headline.
Right now, this is my nominee for the best non-Cardinals-win-the-World-Series sports story of the year. Don Carman, he of the 53-54 record and the 4.11 E.R.A. over a ten-year career, is now one of my favorite players.
Close competition is Toby’s excellent eve-of-the-World Series article about Carmi resident and former Tiger and Cardinal Bob Sykes. Toby, is that available online for me to link to anywhere?
And as we enter the holiday season, some baseball things I’m thankful for:
Jimmy Edmonds, and his new contract that makes him likely to retire a Cardinal.
Adam Wainwright’s curveball and its ability to freeze Carlos Beltran, if for no other reason than my mom’s good health. I’m not sure she would have made it had he hit the bases-clearing triple we all were clearly imagining.
Endy Chavez’s catch, and the fact that it ultimately didn’t matter
Manny Ramirez’s swing. And his hair.
Dusty Baker’s firing. Is that too mean for a holiday list?
Jackie Robinson. ‘Cause you can’t ever be too thankful for Jackie Robinson.
Rickey. GMs, he’s ready to play. Just call.
Yadier Molina’s October power surge. And his girlish smile.
Stacey’s jack-o-lanterns. 10-0 in the Fall Classic and counting.
Labor peace.
J.D. Drew’s silly, silly baserunning, and the fact that that play also involved Jeff Kent and his mustache.
The Big Unit, even though he’s a Yankee and, apparently, past his peak. Oh, that slider, and that hair.
Mike Shannon. So long as he’s broadcasting, a part of me will still be a kid.
Opening Day, and living a mile-and-a-half from a ballpark, a childhood dream unexpectedly realized.
And, finally and forever, Albert Pujols. ‘Nuff said.
I know I’m forgetting dozens. Feel free, ye millions of readers, to add your own in comments.
This, the first ever cross-posting between my two blogs, is in honor of former major-league pitcher Johnny Sain, who died last week at the age of 89.
Sain was a member of the pennant-winnning 1948 Boston Braves, where his and teammate Warren Spahn’s success relative to the rest of the pitching staff led to the well-known rhyme, “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.” (This past summer, some Cardinals fans altered the rhyme to read “Carp and Soup, the rest are poop.”) Sain went 139-116 with a 3.49 E.R.A. for the Braves, Yankees, and Athletics in an eleven-year career.
This obituary appears on both my book and baseball blogs because
Sain is one of the most memorable characters in Jim Bouton‘s wonderful Ball Four (1970). Much of the drama and fun of the book comes from the distrust with which Bouton is viewed by his teammates, coaches, and the baseball establishment. After all, the man reads books on the team flights–and on top of that, he’s a knuckleballer. Throughout the book, Bouton clashes with his manager and pitching coaches. The biggest problem he encounters is resistance to the fact that, as a knuckleballer, he’s sharper if he throws pretty much every day, while ordinary pitchers perform better on a schedule with days off. Most of the other players and coaches refuse to accept that Bouton knows what he’s talking about; he’s seen, variously as a malcontent and a moron.
Sain, on the other hand, takes a minimalist coaching approach. He looks at each player and sees what works for him. You pitch better if you throw every day? Throw every day. You pitch better if you make sure to do your running? Do your running. Quiet but effective, Sain isn’t suspicious of difference, nor is he at all controlling; he’s just looking to make his pitchers better. Therefore, he stands in such stark contrast to nearly everyone else in the book that he appears a genius both of baseball and of life in general.
I’ve been told it was raining in Boston the day of Sain’s death. I guess that means Spahn started the next day for the Heavenlys, with Sain up the day after. After all, though I usually come down on the side of there being no heaven, if there were to be one, it would be inconceivable without baseball.
A mere week after I actually offered a toast* at a dinner party to Bud Selig, in appreciation of that nasty, nasty man’s surprise brokering of an amicable new baseball labor deal, I find that I again have to credit him: surprisingly enough, he made a truthful statement!
“Tony La Russa is not a shrinking violet. He can be very confrontational,” says Selig in Murray Chass’s column in the New York Times today on Kenny Rogers’s dirty, dirty hand.
Should I worry that my world is turning upside down?
*Stacey refused to join the toast.
Jim pointed out the other day that Ed Goren, the President of Fox Sports, wrote to the L.A. Times in support of Tim McCarver. Among other things, he said that McCarver is “the best first-guesser in the business.”
Now, much as I like to complain about McCarver, I’m sure there were times in this World Series when he displayed his reportedly impressive first-guessing ability. But the one example that Goren chooses to cite lays bare the reasons that Fox’s baseball coverage is so utterly terrible.
Here’s Goren’s example: “Who else would have suggested that Tony La Russa remove right fielder Chris Duncan for defensive purposes in Game 5 before he botched a fly ball into a double?”
Hmm. Who else? Let’s see:
1) Steve Stone
2) Me
3) Any Cardinals fan who had seen Duncan play at any time in person on on television, or who had heard a Cardinals game on the radio in which he played. Those people would know that Duncan is by trade a lousy first baseman, but that, given that there’s no place for non-MVP first basemen in St. Louis this decade, he’s learning to play the outfield. And he’s not very good at it.
4) Any fan of one of the teams the Cardinals played against this season after Duncan was called up and began playing regularly.
5) And, oh, yeah: Anyone who had watched Game 5 of the 2006 World Series up to the point when McCarver suggested replacing Duncan . . . and who had therefore seen Duncan’s earlier error, an embarrassing botched pop fly.
That Goren didn’t realize himself that it might be worth removing Duncan is bad enough.
That he also didn’t realize that many, many, many of the people watching might have figured out on their own that removing Duncan might be a good idea is bad enough.
But that he realizes neither of those obvious facts, and then, therefore, thinks that Tim McCarver is a genius because he points out what we’ve all realized tells you all you need to know about why Fox’s coverage of baseball is so bad.
They do not care about, like, enjoy, or understand the game. Nor do they care about or understand those of us who do.
Seven Octobers now we’ve been hosting Baseball Open House at the Rocketship, and this year’s has to rank as our most successful: * We had good friends in attendance throughout, ranging from two or three people all the way to a high of eleven (plus me and Stacey) for Kenny Rogers’s glorious (pine-tar-aided?) dismantling of the Yankees in the LDS. * Half a dozen or so friends made their first Baseball Open House appearance. * We hosted people for every night game in the entire playoffs except three, two of which were graciously hosted by TITANIA, and the other, the World Series opener, which we watched with the whole Stahl family at my brother’s house in Indianapolis following my running of the Indy marathon. * We cooked up a mess of food, relying more than in any previous October on the seasonal produce that we get each week from our membership in a local community-supported farm; in that way, we were closer to the autumn outdoors than ever before. * Stacey’s baseball jack-o-lanterns ran their World Series game-winning streak to 10. Damon went 4-0 in 2004, Ozzie Guillen went 4-0 in 2005, and the Yadi-o-lantern went 2-0 to close out the 2006 series. * Despite the brevity of many of the series–the teams only played six games over the minimum this October–we saw some very exciting baseball. As my mom put it on the phone minutes after Adam Wainwright struck out Carlos Beltran with the bases loaded to put St. Louis in the World Series, “That one nearly killed me!” Even the fans without a rooting interest in the game knew what she meant. * We had champagne in the fridge, and we got to use it. We drank some after the aforementioned strikeout of Beltran, and we put back more of it after Wainwright snapped off the same curveball against Brandon Inge . . . which leads to the final reason this Baseball Open House was such a success . . . . * THE CARDINALS WON THE WORLD SERIES! FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE I WAS EIGHT YEARS
OLD AND NOT YET REALLY A FAN! Thanks, Cardinals. Thanks, everyone who came out. Thanks, Jim, for another season of BRPA. I’ll try to be a more reliable poster in 2007, and maybe you can make it for Baseball Open House next October. The only proper way to end this is to turn the mike over to the Rajah:
“People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”–Rogers Hornsby
Pitchers and catchers report in about 100 days.
Hang around me and Stacey long enough, and you’re sure to hear us speculating about the dangers of the coming zombie apocalypse. We’ll enter a building and note whether the doors open in (bad) or out (good); we’ll speculate on whether a bow is a good anti-zombie weapon (no, because eventually you’re going to have to go get the arrows); we’ll weigh the merits of having a zombie apocalypse supply cache (shotgun, ammo, canned brains) versus having a bird flu apocalypse supply cache (water, hand crank radio, forty pounds of peanut butter).
Well, after paying close attention to Friday night’s Yankees-Tigers game, we’re beginning to wonder whether we were focused on the wrong danger. The coming disaster isn’t a zombie apocalypse . . . it’s a Giambi apocalypse.
Several times during the game, Fox’s X-treme Close-up Camera caught Derek Jeter lifting his cap off his large head and adjusting it. The next shot, inevitably, would be of Zombie Giambi, eyes rolling and mouth wide, in near-ecstasy at the thought of Jeter’s delectable brains.
So in anticipation of the Giambi Apocalypse, what should we put in our supply cache? After this weekend, I know two things: Kenny Rogers and, just to be safe, this guy.
You know things have been going badly for your team when NPR has a feature on their near-choke. But after two weeks of unwanted drama, the Cardinals pulled out their sixth Central Division championship in seven years, which means that, because in the one year they didn’t make the playoffs, 2003, the Cubs won the division, there’s been a team in which Stacey and I have a serious rooting interest in the playoffs every one of the seven years we’ve been hosting baseball open house at the Rocketship.
Some notes from last week:
1) Wednesday night, when the Cardinals desperately needed a win against San Diego to end a seven-game losing streak, late in the game Cardinals broadcaster John Rooney said, regarding the extra-inning Astros-Pirates game, “You’ll hear the crowd start bubbling in a few minutes, because the magic number has just dropped to four.” Stacey and I, while listening to the Cardinals game on the Internet, were also following the Pirates-Astros game on mlb.com’s Gameday, and from what we could tell, the game wasn’t over–the Pirates had by no means won.
Rooney came back from a break for a San Diego pitching change saying, “We had some wrong information on that Pittsburgh-Houston game.” But before he could explain what had actually happened, Albert Pujols hit one into orbit, giving the Cardinals a good-sized lead. Rooney got caught up in describing the action, and he didn’t get back to apologizing and explaining for probably five minutes. Houston would go on to win that game, leaving Rooney in very real danger of having fatally jinxed the team.
2) That mistake also ties in with my brother’s biggest complaint about Rooney, whom I’ve been a big fan of since his days keeping Ed Farmer in check on the White Sox broadcasts: he’s profligate with his home run hopes. About once per game, he’ll get all excited about a long fly . . . that dies short of the warning
track. If you’re like me and my brother, and still get most of your baseball through radio announcers (admittedly via the Internet), it’s an extremely frustrating habit.
3) On Friday night, with Pujols at the plate again, Mike Shannon delivered the following call:
Shannon: Here’s the pitch. Pujols swings, and Ha-ha! You can’t sneak the sun past the rooster, boy! And the rooster just crowed!
Rooney: Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Rooney and Shannon work together better than Rooney and Wayne Hagin ever did. I hope Rooney’s okay with Shannon’s prominence on the broadcast, because they really do make a good team. Shannon, though not a great (or even good, really) play-by-play man, is a wonderful friend to listen to on the broadcasts. So long as he’s there, I’ll still feel like listening to Cardinals games is the same experience I grew up with, despite Jack Buck’s death.
4) Saturday, Stacey and I watched the Cardinals on Fox–cleverly synching up the Internet radio feed to the Tivo so that we could hear Shannon and Rooney instead of Piniella and Whoever–through the end of the seventh. The Cardinals were down 2-0 at that point, but I gathered my things to go to Wrigley Field, because I had a ticket to my last game of the year, an inconsequential tilt between the Cubs and Rockies.
I hopped on my bicycle . . . and got two blocks away, to Wilson Avenue, before I thought, “Why am I leaving an important game, one that I care about, to go see an utterly inconsequential game?” I turned around and got back home for the bottom of the eighth, which allowed me to see Sandfrog lead singer Scott Spiezio’s game-breaking triple. As soon as the game was over, I was back on my bike, and by the first pitch of the second inning at Wrigley, I was in my seat.
5) I hope there’s no long-term karmic damage from my rooting for Larry “Chipper” Jones and the Braves this weekend. Similarly, I hope St. Louis doesn’t get the punishment it probably deserves from the gods for doing the Tomahawk Chop a couple of times this weekend at Busch Stadium. As Lando might say, “There was nothing we could do. They arrived just before you did.” Or something like that.
Go, Cardinals!
Some notes from last night’s Cubs-Pirates game, which featured the two worst teams in the league performing a sloppy “After you”/”No, I insist”/”No, no, you first”/”Well, if you insist, I’ll muff this bunt” routine to see who would get the privilege of losing: 1) In my shoulder bag was a grocery sack of sage from Stacey’s garden for my seatmate, Michelle. The bag inspector at the gate looked at it askance. BI: “What’s that?” Me: Sage.” BI:”What?” Me: “Sage. It’s from a garden, for my seatmate.” BI: “What?” Me: “Sage.” BI:”Like you put on food?” Me:”Yeah. You can smell it.” [BI Smells it. Makes a face.] BI: “I’m gonna have to ask about this.” Me: [Astonished] “You’re kidding. Really. You’re not serious.” BI: “I am, too.” She called her manager over, he took one look at it and, presumably deciding that I could neither blow up the stadium with it nor injure anyone by throwing it at them, waved me into the park. 2) During the game, the season ticket holders who sit in my section–those who bothered to attend, that is–had a discussion of whether this is the worst Cubs team we’ve had to watch. I’ve been attending games at Wrigley Field since 1993, and I’ve had season tickets since 1999, and I, like all the rest, weighed in with a resounding “Yes.” You could argue that the 1997 team was worse, but it at least had Sammy Sosa doing his strikeout/homer/strikeout routine. This team didn’t even have Derrek Lee for most of the year, and Ryan Theriot’s remarkable mustache can only go so far towards making up for such bad baseball. 3) The good thing about the Cubs suffering through their third straight disappointing (and second straight flat-out bad) season is that the fair-weather fans are starting to see the storm clouds. The announced attendance for last night’s game was only 32,000 or so, way down from the 40,000+ the Cubs were drawing earlier in the year. But I’d be surprised if the actual attendance was half that. In the center field bleachers the night before, the cameramen had shown a guy stretched out flat, sleeping, and he could have easily reprised his nap in any section of the bleachers last night. Meanwhile, there were only about five beer vendors working the whole of the upper deck, and nary a Super Ropes guy in sight. It’s kinda nice to be able to stretch out a little again. It reminds me of the wonderful days of 1997, pre-Kerry Wood and that first wild card run, when you
could decide to go to the game day of, with three or four friends, buy upper deck tickets and sit pretty much anywhere. So for all you folks who love Wrigley Field but have given up on attending in recent years–I’m looking at you, Bob and Luke–this is your warning: the glory days may soon be back. Start practicing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” 4) Then, in the 8th of what had been a forgettable ballgame, Matt Capps hung a curve to Derrek Lee, who immediately reminded him of why his pitching coach had advised against such behavior. It was a beautiful night in a beautiful ballpark, and that moment was a good reminder of why we were there.