Well Done, Edgar

In 2004, Edgar Renteria of the St. Louis Cardinals grounded out softly to the pitcher on a play that gave the Boston Red Sox their first World Series title since 1918. The Cardinals took the title in 2006, but I know I'm not the only fan who was a little disappointed that Edgar wasn't celebrating with them. That was corrected (a little bit) tonight.

Two years after Willie McGee's retirement, the position of "favorite active baseball player" was open (after briefly being filled by Tony Gwynn), and Renteria stepped in nicely. I was, I believe, the first person to sponsor his page on Baseball-Reference.com, and he was the first player I ever chose in a fantasy draft. Congratulations on winning the 2010 World Series MVP--you deserve it.

Backe v. Pujols

I had started to address this minor conflict a couple weeks ago (when it actually happened), but I got busy and left it alone for a while. Then the other day I was reading in Predictably Irrational about how people's expectations affect their perceptions, and it gave the example of sports fans who come to opposing conclusions about the same play. I'll hopefully post a review of the book at a later date, but until then, here's the entry I originally intended to create:

Yesterday's spat between Brandon Backe and Albert Pujols is barely worth paying an ounce of attention to, but I'm writing about it anyway. Sort of. What makes the argument interesting is not the argument itself, but the disparity in the reaction by two different fan communities.

We are more connected than ever, but it could be argued that we are also becoming more sheltered than ever. I was at dinner with one of my business school professors last week, and he told a story of a research project he was working on. It involved monitoring financial message boards to pinpoint the contributors who could most accurately predict the behavior of the market. Unfortunately, he found that there's not some sort of marketplace that promotes the best ideas; instead, there's a sorting into two diametrically opposed camps where people reinforce each other's (usually incorrect) prognostications.

The same can be said for the message boards at Bill O'Reilly and the Daily Kos, which have produced some pretty hateful talk, and unfortunately it appears to be true of the comment sections at baseball blogs. Viva El Birdos and Crawfish Boxes are two members of the SportsBlog Nation community of blogs, and they're the two baseball blogs that I read regularly. Here's some of the reaction from both comment sections on yesterday's altercation:

St. Louis:

• "Backe needs to do something in the majors before he starts talking"


• "Smart move dumbass...your team thanks you"


• "If it wasnt for this does anyone know who brandon backe is anyway?"


• "Fox had Backe mic'd for that game [game 5 of the 2005 NLCS] and all i remember before Pujols' bomb was his shrill squealing throughout the game."

Houston:

• "Calling up later to apologize is the bare minimum, but it seems like LaRussa's Cardinals are always involved in dirty stuff like this"


• "First, it was a malicious slide in an uncontested play at the plate. Secondly, Pujols is a BITCH and needs an attitude adjustment to wipe that arrogant smirk of [sic] his stinky fat face."


• "He should get dotted every time up. He's been due for years, dating back to ruining Brad Lidge for us.

Something in each blog's respective comments section reeks of lack of exposure to differing opinions. So in the interest of fairness, here are some comments to each team's fans:

To the Cards fans: First off, there should be no bitterness regarding Brandon Backe's crowing during game 5 of the NLCS. Remember how that ended up playing out? Pujols goes off the back window, the Astros get swept out of the World Series, and the Cardinals take it in five the next year. All things considered, I think the Cardinals came out pretty well. Let them "squeal" three years ago. No biggie. Secondly, maybe we can all admit that, were Tony LaRussa managing in the other dugout, there would be more than a couple aspects of his extreme fidelity to the unwritten rules of baseball that would anger us from time to time.

To the 'Stros fans: Take a lesson from Carlos Beltran. The guy wasn't the savior of the baseball world for the half a season he played for the Astros and then a complete jerk after he left. Similarly, Albert Pujols is not a bad guy just because he doesn't play for your team. We all root for laundry to a certain extent, but don't take it to the extreme. It's bad for the soul. If Pujols were an Astro, he'd be the greatest player ever, and if Backe were a Cardinal, he'd be the punk from your high school who sat in the back of the class and drew the logos of heavy metal bands on his binder. Also, calling the clubhouse to apologize is not the bare minimum; it's a pretty decent thing to do.

You might be a Cardinals fan if…

...at 1:01 Central Time today, you pulled up a PDF of the Mitchell Report, typed "pujols" into the search box, and hit enter.

That's what I did, and after taking a look at some of the blogs this afternoon, that's what a lot of people did. We all registered relief when no results came back, but  it's unwise to view a player's absence from the report as evidence that he doesn't use steroids. I believe Pujols is clean---he's shown none of the steroid-type spikes associated with steroid use, he has no reason (dipping production or being on the major league margin) to use, and he strikes me as an honest, straightforward man who sincerely cares about the integrity of the game. But on this report were 86 names that somebody was certain would never, ever use steroids. And anybody who thinks that the list, which used only two sources for most of the names it generated, is comprehensive is deluded. The list could be off by an order of magnitude---the players listed are remarkably diverse in terms of team, position, and age, but the one thing they seem to have in common is their carelessness. Presumably, there is another group of players (and trainers, and doctors, and executives) that was careful enough to steer clear of the investigation.

I was not alone among St. Louis fans in being relieved that the Cardinals were not terribly hard hit by the report. What a horrible way to react---finding only a few minor players from your favorite team implicated in this awfully damning report and treating that as a silver lining---but that's unfortunately the world we live in. Steroids have arguably ruined the last decade of the game, at least in terms of statistics and comparing with other eras. I wouldn't want to be a Hall of Fame voter right now---I'd be compelled not to vote for players linked with steroids, but even that is troubling because a) many of the links are based on hearsay and b) withholding votes from steroid users is essentially tacit approval of the people you vote for as being clean players, when you actually have no idea.

As I looked through the results of the investigation, one name jumped off the page. Fernando Vina. Fernando Vina? The guy who sits in between Mark McGwire and Tony Pena as the Cardinal acquisitions in which I am most disappointed? The guy whose only recourse for getting on base was attempting to get hit by a pitch? Was he taking steroid injections into his right elbow? Did he discuss with his trainer a mix of drugs that would allow him to dangle his limbs into the strike zone? Did he develop such a super-strong elbow that he was able to deflect fastballs with it four times a game? When the steroids came in, did the side of the package say, "Side effects may include an insanely overmanicured goatee"? That Fernando Vina?

This is really depressing, and the saddest part is that it probably doesn't get any better until Major League Baseball develops and agrees on a test for human growth hormone. As has been said elsewhere, the focus is on names like Roger Clemens when it should have been squarely on two names, Bud Selig and Donald Fehr. And shame on all of us fans, too, by the way. None of the stakeholders in this thing asked enough questions or demanded enough action, and now we're paying the price for it.

In other news, the Astros traded five players for Miguel Tejada (possibly the most productive active player implicated in the report) a couple days ago. Before the 2007 season, a couple Houston friends asked what I thought the Astros should do about Roger Clemens. I said that they should pay him $3 million to go play somewhere else. The reason behind that is that signing Roger Clemens, with his ability to lift the team out of the doldrums and into the playoff hunt, awakened something (let's call it hope) that was not necessarily productive in the long term. I didn't think the Astros would ever be great again with Roger Clemens; just good enough to almost make the playoffs. And with the way they tend to give up prospects, I think their focus should be squarely on the future. They don't need Roger Clemens around to change their viewpoint on "win now" vs. "win later". Well, the Astros have proven that they don't need Roger Clemens around to help them make ill-advised short term decisions; they can do that just fine on their own. In Tejada, they get a very good player for at least (and maybe only) one year. They gave up five players, including some promising youngsters, with 27 years remaining on their combined contracts. Yikes.

Spring Training Days 2 and 3

My favorite newcomer so far has to be Junior Spivey. He's always been a solid player, and he's the most conspicuous team member in his calf-high striped socks, always a plus. We'll see if he can live up to Edgar Renteria's old #3. Speaking of uniforms, when I arrived at the stadium in Ft. Lauderdale I was pleasantly surprised to see the Cards wearing their red caps with their grey road uniforms. For the past 15 or so years, they've been wearing navy blue caps with their road uniforms. I think the red caps with the grey jerseys is the best look in baseball--I hope they keep it during the regular season.

The Cardinals lost Monday's game to the Orioles 11-8 in a game that featured 32 hits. The pitching looked pretty suspect, but I guess they get a little bit of a break for pitching to actual major leaguers. Sandwiched between games featuring the no-name Marlins and the Dodgers' soon-to-be AA players, the Orioles ran out Corey Patterson, Melvin Mora, Kevin Millar, Jeff Conine, Jay Gibbons, and Desi Relaford.

Tuesday's game was back at home (Jupiter, FL), and I arrived at the spring training complex just in time to see Chris Carpenter finishing one of his drills and signing some autographs along the chain link fence. But he didn't just sign some autographs; he signed all of them. For 10-15 minutes, Mr. Cy Young 2005 signed balls, signed pictures, and posed for photos until everyone who wanted his time got it, which I had never seen before.

The Cardinals played the Dodgers on Tuesday. The Bums are one of the few National League teams I've never seen play, so I was very excited. The Cards and Dodgers have always been the two most storied NL teams, which is kind of cool. And they've got a bunch of names in their lineup, among them Rafael Furcal, Nomar Garciaparra, Cesar Izturis, Jeff Kent, Bill Mueller, J.D. Drew, and Kenny Lofton. But the lineup I got to see featured Repko, Aybar, Ethier, Guzman, Loney, Martin, Martinez, Abreu, and Andy LaRoche, who between them have two years of major league experience.

Webster's defines "masochism" as "trying to keep score at a spring training game". It took me until the fifth inning of my third spring training game, but I learned that keeping score during spring training is a pretty dumb undertaking. First off, they make all kinds of substitutions without notifying you, and, as was the case today, the players don't have names on their jerseys. Also, there isn't a good scoreboard that shows the lineup, which is important because multiple switches are often made, so you need to know who bats where. Not that it matters. Spring training is where the guy sitting next to you has been a fan for fifty years and the usher has seen more baseball in the month of March than you've seen in your whole life, so you're better off talking baseball than trying to record it.

Spring Training Day 1

There's something uniquely American about going to spring training, and there's also something very American about listening to a Bob Dylan album while driving down the interstate, though I'm not sure how well the two go together. The Dylan record, which I bought this morning, is a symptom of the unfortunate fact that my rental car doesn't have a tape deck to play my iPod, so I had to find something to save me from eastern Florida radio.

Lined with palm trees and orange groves, the drive down Florida's coast down I-95 is really beautiful, with a couple notable exceptions. The last time I was in Florida was for a waste-to-energy project with Dow. I learned that because Florida has a high water table, there are very few places they can put landfills, so the landfills they do have are extremely large. In fact, in some counties the highest elevation is actually a hill filled with garbage. Along my drive today there were only two hills of any size, and wouldn't you know it, both of them were landfills.

I arrived in Jupiter at about 10:30 after leaving Orlando at 8:00. When I made it to the practice fields there were some guys taking batting practice to my right. I was a couple hundred feet from the batter when I heard a ball being hit. When I looked up, it was coming straight for me. I reached up to grab it, and the ball bounded off my fingers and was retrived by a guy behind me. I should have known this already, but I had it reinforced in a pretty painful way: it's tough to catch a well-struck ball barehanded.

At the beginning of last year I got a little tired of hearing how all the Cardinals fans were going to fall in love with David Eckstein. He was described as the kind of guy who brings his lunchpail to the ballpark--he runs to first base on a base on balls, always hustles on every play, and works hard enough to overcome his lack of size. But I've discovered that he's more than just Pete Rose with an adequate haircut. He's a really nice and funny guy, as he continues to demonstrate. Last year at pregame warmups in Houston he enjoyed leaning into the first two rows of fans to catch balls being thrown by his partne, and today he stopped to pose for a few pictures, joking with the woman who was snapping them. Plus, he signs more autographs than just about anybody I've ever seen.

The thing that really cracks me up about spring training is how chummy the players and fans are. After Scott Rolen finished batting practice, an older woman complimented him on his hitting and asked him if he was healthy. He smiled and said, "Healthy enough." Later the same woman had a long conversation about an upcoming cruise that some of the Cardinals participate in.

The game was pretty decent. The Cards beat the Marlins, 6-3, in a pretty sloppy game that featured six errors. By far the most interesting game was had by Travis Hanson. He came in to play third base in the sixth inning and immediately got to work, collecting two quick errors. He had another error in the seventh. Then he hit a homer on the only pitch he saw and had a very nice defensive play in the ninth. For those of you scoring at home, he had a fielding average of .500 (three errors in six chances) and a slugging average of 4.000. Wow.

The Marlins had a fire sale in the offseason. Again. Here's the surnames that made up their starting lineup today: Andino, Uggla, Jacobs (Mike), Willingham, Hermida, Helms, Olivo, Cepicky, Abercrombie, and Mitre. In the entire starting lineup, everybody not named Wes Helms or Miguel Olivo had a grand total of 400 major league at bats (and Helms and Olivo are certainly a far cry from Delgado and Castillo--Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis are the only notable 2005 Marlins still on the roster). I'd say their owner is pulling a Major League and fielding an intentionally bad team so the team can move to Miami, except they're already in Miami. It is fun to see them do the push-ups after popping the ball up, though.

A Well Deserved Cy

Back in late September, I had a conversation with Chris Carpenter that really told me a lot about him.

At the time, he had had a couple bad starts in a row after having basically nothing but quality starts all year. Needless to say, he was not in the best spirits. "Yeah, it's been a good year," he said, "but lately I feel like all the innings I've pitched are catching up to me. I just can't locate my pitches the way I did earlier in the season."

I tried to reassure him. "You've been the best pitcher in the league all year, and you'll get it back together."

"I sure hope so," he said as he dropped his head, his eyes disappearing beneath the brim of his cap. "I feel like I'm letting the team down with my performance lately. I just don't want to screw things up for them."

"Chris, that's ridiculous," I said. "The team wouldn't be anywhere without you. You've been its star all year. Sure it's been rough at times, but you've carried us through. And yeah, we're in ninth place right now, but without you we wouldn't be above 12th or 13th place. I'd say the team is pretty proud of you."

Slowly, as he thought about what I had said, he began to pick his head up, and he looked at me with a sideways glance that was at the same time frustrated and amused. He stared at me for a couple seconds, and then he said, "I'm talking about the Cardinals, skip, not the Crickets!!"

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The Crickets were born out of my friend Adam's fantasy baseball league. It was my first time playing fantasy baseball, and to say that I screwed up the draft would be a tremendous understatement. My first two picks were Edgar Renteria (ranked #39) and Joey Gathright (ranked about #800), and while a few fantasy nerds would tell you that those were not the best choices, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. But my best pick was the first pitcher I chose, Mr. Chris Carpenter. I later told Adam about the pick, and I said that I was able to get Carp because some people thought that his great 2004 year was a fluke. Adam said that, yeah, he kind of thought that it was a fluke, too.

Apparently Carpenter was listening, because he put together a remarkable year. I was lucky enough to see him pitch twice this year; in the first game he pitched eight shutout innings to defeat Andy Pettitte, and the second, also in Houston, was his 20th victory. I was honored to be able to attend that game, which at the time made a Cy Young seem almost certain. Carpenter slipped a little down the stretch, and you could make a great argument for Willis or Clemens or Pettitte (though they went a combined 0-4 against Carpenter), but it's great to see him get the Cards' first Cy Youong award since Bob Gibson. He started three of the Cardinals' five postseason victories, and he was one of two players on the team who really deserve whatever postseason accolades come their way. Way to go, Chris. There's a spot in the 2006 Crickets' starting rotation waiting for you.

Three Days in September

This weekend I was lucky enough to see all three games the Cardinals played against the Astros in Houston.

Remember when Mr. Burns wanted to charge the town of Springfield for power so he built a big sun blocker to keep the town in perpetual darkness? I can’t help but think that C. M. Burns was brought in as a consultant on the construction of Enron Field. Like the sun blocker, the roof at Minute Maid Park is capable of moving but only serves the purpose of keeping the sun out. The last seven games I have attended in Houston have all featured a closed roof. It seems like attaching to your stadium a cool thing like a “retractable roof” comes with a responsibility, namely, to open it every now and again. Otherwise what you’ve got is a plain old roof. The sun is nice to have during a ballgame. That’s all I’m saying.

Friday, September 2, 2005
The first game looked to be the most lopsided matchup. Mark Mulder went for the Cardinals against Ezequiel Astacio, and he was about as perfect as you can be while giving up two runs. In the second inning, two bloop hits and an error led to the two runs. In the third, Mulder issued only a walk. In the fourth through eighth, Mulder retired all eighteen batters consecutively, and the ball never left the infield. For the Cards, hits were steady, but the Astros were able to work around much of the damage. Astacio allowed eight hits in 5 1/3 innings, but he walked none, and the three runs he allowed came from opposite field home runs to Molina (solo) and Edmonds (two runs). When the eighth inning ended, the Cardinals had three runs on ten hits, and the Astros had two runs on two hits.

Enter Jason Isringhausen. The first batter he faced was Morgan Ensberg, who homered to give Houston three runs on three hits. The crazy thing about it is that I had a bad feeling before Izzy came in. Not that he’s an unreliable closer, but you wonder about removing Mulder from his masterful appearance and bringing in someone who hasn’t had a lot of work lately. But he did end the inning with two strikeouts and a ground out to send the game into extras.

In the top of the tenth, Pujols led off with a double, was bunted to third by Edmonds, and was brought home by John Rodriguez on one of the gutsiest squeeze play calls I’ve ever seen. John Rodriguez? Sometimes I think La Russa does these things just to entertain himself.

In the bottom of the inning, Ausmus went yard on Isringhausen. Blown save number two, essentially.

The Cards were retired in order in the eleventh and twelfth. And they handed the ball to Cal Eldred for the bottom halves of those innings, which made me rest easy. I’ve always liked Eldred. I think part of it is his story, as profiled in Three Nights in August. Part of it is seeing him at spring training last year. I was standing about five feet from him, on the other side of a chain link fence, watching him endure a few autograph hounds. One guy was carting around a big box, in which he had multiple 8 x 10 photographs of each player. He set down his box right by Eldred, fished around for a while, and dug out a picture of Eldred wearing a Chicago White Sox uniform. He rolled it up and passed it through the fence, and when he got it back it begrudgingly bore the signature of one of the newest Cardinals. Spring training taught me what an absolute beating autograph signing is, and I’ve always respected guys who do a lot of it. (Kudos to David Eckstein for going above and beyond the call of duty during this series--joking with fans during throwing drills and signing after doing some stretching.) Also, I think Eldred’s a very consistent reliever. And he got the job done, working around a leadoff double in the 11th and, after giving up a single in the 12th, benefiting from Pujols’s read-the-bunt-play-perfectly-and-sprint-and-slide-toward-the-ball-and-field-and-make-a-perfect-throw-to-get-the-lead-runner greatness.

Edmonds led off the 13th with a home run. In the bottom, Ensberg led off with a single off Tavarez but was forced out at second on a very bad call on a sacrifice bunt play. Lane singled, and Tavarez intentionally walked Vizcaino to load the bases for Orlando Palmeiro. La Russa brought in King, who plunked in the tying run and was immediately taken out. Reyes then got Ausmus to pop out but allowed the winning run to score on a Bruntlett single to left. It was a very strange half inning that capped off probably the greatest game I’ve ever seen.

Saturday, September 3, 2005
Today was one of those days that made me think back a ways. In 1985, a guy named John Tudor joined the St. Louis Cardinals. After a 1-7 start, he finished the year 21-8, finishing the year almost unhittable. In most seasons, almost unhittable will get you a Cy Young award, but unfortunately for Tudor a kid named Dwight Gooden was genuinely unhittable that year. Tudor’s ERA was a sublime 1.93; Gooden’s was an unreal 1.53.

What John Tudor was unable to do in 1985, Carpenter might be able to do in 2005. No Cards pitcher has won a Cy Young since Bob Gibson, but Carp’s the real deal. I was there for his brilliant 2-0 victory over Andy Petitte back in June. Before today's game I did a little research and discovered that the Astros had scored one run off him in 24 innings this year. I had a chance to see Chris Carpenter win his 20th game and take a big lead in the Cy Young race, but he would have to get past his old mentor Roger Clemens.

The Cardinals used to have incredible trouble with Roger Clemens, until game 7 of the 2004 NLCS. Since then they have wins in 3 of 4 games against him, and in the one they lost they scored four runs on him.

Carpenter worked around trouble in the first and second, getting two guys out between third and home and allowing just one run to score despite allowing four straight hits (and three straight doubles) across the two innings. The Cardinals took a 2-1 lead in an inning in which only Pujols’s lead off single left the infield. A walk, an error, and a swinging bunt single created the rest of the damage.

Clemens left after five because of a hamstring injury. Berkman’s sixth inning homer took him off the hook for the loss, but Cardinal runs in the 7th and 8th gave Carpenter all he would need. He went the distance, retiring the final 11. Hugs all around as Carpenter set himself further apart from the rest of the field. He is now 3-0 against Clemens and Dontrelle Willis.

Sunday, September 04, 2005
The usually hittable Wandy Rodriguez faced the minimum number of batters through five innings, thanks to a couple nifty snags of hard hit balls by Willy Tavares. Meanwhile, the resurgent Jason Marquis gave up a homer to Lance Berkman in the fourth.

In the top of the sixth, Rodriguez walked the Nunez, leading off the inning from the 7 spot, and hit Luna with a pitch. The baserunners were advanced by a Marquis bunt and brought in by an Edmonds single.

After the Berkman homer, Marquis was nearly perfect. He gave up one hit over the last 5 1/3 and retired the last seven. In the perfect fifth and sixth, he retired two by strikeout and had four balls tapped back to him. He threw six pitches in the eighth and, oh yeah, went the distance in a 4-1 win.

Here’s my stat of the series: 26 to 16 1/3. Over the three games, Cardinals starters averaged three more innings than Astros starters. Rodriguez was the workhorse of the Astros staff with six innings pitched; Mulder, who threw eight but easily could have gone nine, was the laggard of the Cards staff.

If ever, oh ever, a Wiz there was…

Osborne Earl Smith was born on December 26, 1954, in Mobile, Alabama. He grew up in the Watts section of Los Angeles, where he practiced fielding outside his home using a paper bag instead of a glove. He attended California Polytechnic University on an academic scholarship, and he also played baseball. He was drafted in the fourth round of the 1977 draft by the San Diego Padres.

In his first season with the Padres, Ozzie played 159 games and finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting. In 1980, he won a Gold Glove at shortstop and set the major league record for most assists by a shortstop in a single season. In 1982, he was traded for Garry Templeton, another shortstop who was considered far superior to Smith offensively. The 1982 Cardinals won the World Series, and in the offseason Ozzie became baseball's first shortstop to earn $1 million per year. In explaining the contract, Cards manager Whitey Herzog said, "He took two hits or a run away from our opponents every game last year. That’s just as important as a guy who drives in runs."

The Cardinals of the 1980s were much like Smith himself: fast, smart, switch-hitting, able to manufacture runs, and exceptional in the field. Ozzie was the unquestioned leader of a team that included such terrors on the base paths as Vince Coleman, Willie McGee, and Andy Van Slyke. Despite not leading the team in steals, Smith was considered the team's most important base stealer by Whitey Herzog. Said Herzog, "The guy who stole the most bases that meant winning baseball games was Ozzie...Ozzie's forty-some thefts a year meant more to us than Vince's 100 did."

Smith's legacy as a shortstop is unmatched. He played in 15 consecutive All-Star games and earned 13 consecutive Gold Gloves, the most by any position player. Despite being labeled a one-dimensional player early in his career, he finished with almost 2500 hits. He holds major league records for assists and double plays.

The legacy Smith was building on the field was paralleled by the legacy he was building off the field. In 1994, he was awarded the Branch Rickey award, given to the player who personifies "service above self."

As a Padre, Ozzie said "thank you" to the fans on Fan Appreciation Day in the form of a backflip. He took the backflip to St. Louis and performed it before every home game. He once even brought his young son out onto the field to perform a somersault, which was the talk of Mrs. Adams's second grade class at Chesterfield Elementary the next morning.

For obvious reasons, Ozzie was nicknamed "The Wizard," a nickname that went a long way in describing what it felt like to go to the ballpark and see him play. Watching Ozzie play was pure magic. When he turned a double play, he didn't just jump to avoid the runner arriving at second; he floated. In 1996, Ozzie was in his final year, and rookie Doug Glanville decided to make his presence known by taking Ozzie out at second.

"So I slid where most mortal shortstops would have positioned themselves," Glanville said. "And he moved the complete opposite way to turn it. I must have missed him by 10 feet."

Of all the games I've attended in any sport, Ozzie had the greatest presence of any competitor I've ever seen. When you watch Alex Rodriguez or Randy Johnson or Barry Bonds you feel awe; when you watch Ozzie Smith you feel joy. At the same time, Ozzie made you feel sorry for all the people who would never get to see him in person.

To many people, the nickname "Wizard" encapsulates a lot about the playing career of a very gifted athlete, yes, but it also brings to mind an exceptional human being playing in a great baseball town. It elicits memories of the city that did what it was told and went crazy when Ozzie's homer bounced off the concrete support in right field to bring the Cardinals within a game of the 1985 World Series.

A primary virtue of nicknames is brevity. "Wizard" certainly accomplishes that--it packs 19 years worth of incredibly evocative sports memories into two tiny syllables.

Three Days in June

Last weekend, I decided to attend an entire series for the first time in my life. I was partially inspired by the book Three Nights in August, which chronicles a series between the Cardinals and the Cubs. The series I went to was between the Cardinals and the Astros.

Game 1:
This is the one I was looking forward to the most. It was Chris Carpenter vs. Andy Pettitte, but more importantly it was an opportunity for my boys to get a little redemption and for me to be there to watch it. Last year in the NLCS, the Cardinals went 0-3 in Houston. Though the Cardinals have already won at the Enron Dome, er, Minute Maid Park this year, there’s a big difference between being there in person and watching on TV. I hadn’t seen any of the Cardinals’ previous victories this year, but I was there for a particularly gut-wrenching loss in game 4 of the NLCS last year.

It was my first playoff game ever--I went with my sister Cristina, and we wore matching Willie McGee jerseys, only to watch the Astros take control late with a Beltran home run. I felt horribly for a team that I had been with since spring training, but more than a little of my frustration was directed inward as my sister and I were treated less than hospitably on the way out of the ballpark. I’ve often said that only good can come from having a real investment in a sports team--whether the team wins or loses, you’ve gone through something with them that deepens your involvement and your appreciation. If I’m going to take that approach, I guess I have to accept that the games that get you down are part of that process. A lot of people, it seems, try for sports to be something else. These people live vicariously through sports in a very selective way. If their team does well, it gives meaning to their life and gives them a reason to feel superior to all the people whose favorite teams weren’t as fortunate. If their team does poorly they write the team off and call in to sports talk radio complaining about how the team’s a bunch of schmucks.

Tonight’s game I attended with my sister Cristina and my friend Elliot, who is an Astros fan but always tolerates my love of the Cardinals. We arrived in time for batting practice, and I got to see Albert Pujols play his own brand of “around the world”--starting with the right field foul pole, he would take turns hitting home runs into virtually every section of seats until he got to the no man’s land in straightaway center, and when he started hitting to left field he was content to keep hitting the railroad tracks.

The game itself may have been the best pitched game I’ve ever seen. Pettitte gave up one run through seven innings, and Carpenter was unscored upon through eight. The Astros had chances to get to Carpenter, the best being in the fifth inning. With a runner on third and one out, Willy Taveras failed to make contact on a suicide squeeze, and Adam Everett was quickly caught in a rundown. Then, Taveras singled to right, and Andy Pettitte was waved home from second. The throw from So Taguchi was a couple steps up the third base line, but remarkably Pettitte was just getting around third. The phrase “out by a mile” is so overused that it has lost all meaning, so I’ll just say that he was out by 30 feet. So, twice in the same inning, the catcher had the ball in his glove and saw a man making a beeline toward the plate while he was still only about halfway there. Which means that twice in the same inning, Yadier Molina saw two people running toward him who magically turned into giant gift-wrapped boxes with big, pretty bows on top, not unlike when the Tasmanian Devil would envision Bugs Bunny turning into a feast on a giant platter, complete with all the trimmings.

It remained a one-run game until the ninth inning, when Pujols homered to the train tracks in left, just like in BP. All in all, the game was one of the best I’d ever seen. It was tight the whole way through, with a plenty of exciting moments. And best of all, it allowed me to forget about last year’s playoffs.


Game 2:
Today was Astros Umbrella Day. It’s a good thing the umbrellas weren’t handed out for yesterday’s game, or most of them would have found their way into the third base coach’s back.

Before the game began I told my sister, “This game has the potential to get lopsided.” I should have said, “This game has the potential to get silly.” That’s the kind of win that’s especially demoralizing--the win where the other team has given up on trying to keep its game face and is all about having fun. The game has gotten so out of hand that you can no longer pretend you’re in an actual competition. It’s like when a basketball game is a blowout by halftime and the game ends with all the starters who are sitting on the bench giggling at the guy who hasn’t played all year and jacks up threes every time the ball touches his hands.

The Astros threw Wandy Rodriguez against Jason Marquis, and it looked instantly like a mismatch. Rodriguez had pitched only 11 innings through two starts, and had an ERA of about six and a half. Marquis, on the other hand, has been pitching very well and has such a good bat that he’s been used as a pinch hitter a few times this season. Heck, his batting average is about 25 points better than anybody in the Astros’ lineup.

The strike zone in today’s game was as big as I’ve ever seen, which surprisingly led to a glut of runs. After both teams traded runs in the first and failed to score in the second, things really got interesting in the third. Marquis led off with a single, Eckstein followed with a single (he took second on a throw to third), and Pujols was intentionally walked after an Edmonds strikeout. Reggie Sanders then homered, which brought out a smattering of boos from the crowd. The Cardinals plated two more runs before Jason Marquis came up again, this time with a man on and two outs. His second hit of the inning was a home run that cleared the right field foul pole by ten feet and had the ‘Stros fans booing like crazy. The Cards fans, on the other hand, were trying to hold back the giggles in a hostile environment. After that, Brandon Backe, scheduled to start in just four days, settled things down in two innings of work.

The Astros made a game of it, closing to within two runs only to lose 11-9, but the only really interesting part of the last six innings was the seventh inning stretch. Before we started singing, the public address announcer encouraged everyone to open their umbrellas and twirl them. And they did, which was bizarre.

Game 3:
Going into this day, I had only two questions: Would the Cardinals get the sweep? and Would the roof be open?

I’ve grown used to the roof at Minute Maid Park being closed, but I’ve never understood it. I always thought it was universal that people liked to see the sun shining during a ballgame, but apparently a lot of Houston prefers to have the roof closed.

I guess I should have had Roger Clemens on my mind as well. This was my first time to see him pitch in person, but for whatever reason he’s not high up on my “must see” list. Here are some of the guys I’ve made a point to see in person: Willie McGee, Tony Gwynn, Ozzie Smith, Dwight Gooden, Alex Rodriguez, and Joey Gathright (okay, so you think the last name doesn’t fit in. Just wait.) Here are some players who are next on the list: Greg Maddux, Ichiro Suzuki, and Vladimir Guerrero. But Roger has never been one of those guys I’ve ached to see. Still, the matchup was attractive. Clemens was pitching against Mark Mulder, and the last time they got together the Cardinals won 1-0 in ten innings.

The Cards looked good early, getting three runs off Clemens in the top of the first, which you would figure might hold up considering the Astros scored a total of 11 runs in Clemens’s first 7 starts. But the Astros scored five runs in the bottom of the inning, giving him more run support than in any game this year.

After two innings, with the score still 5-3, I noticed that Clemens had thrown 53 pitches and Mulder 40, and I decided to track pitch counts, figuring that the team that could get into the bullpen first could have a leg up. It didn’t work out that way. Clemens settled down with innings of 15 and 11 pitches before throwing 20 in the 5th inning and departing after giving up a hit to lead off the sixth. But Mulder was chased out after failing to retire the first two batters in the bottom of the fourth. The score didn’t change much--the final was 6-4, and the Cardinals never really looked like they were going to make a run.

As for the roof, it stayed closed. With the roof closed, Minute Maid feels more like a shopping mall than a ballpark, especially since last year’s playoff atmosphere has given way to a quieter, less lively crowd that has already seen its share of bad baseball this year. Leaving the stadium, I had kind of a mixed reaction to not being talked to by any overzealous Astros fans. It was nice not to get the drunken yelling that had greeted me almost a year ago, but today’s silence was more about apathy than politeness, which is no good. But the weekend was great overall--I’m going to have to do this again.

It was 20 years ago today…

It's pretty jarring to think that this summer represents the 20th anniversary of my becoming a St. Louis Cardinals fan. I've been a Cards fan longer than I've been just about anything.

It's funny what's stuck with me about that 1985 season. I still remember the first game I ever attended with my dad at Busch Stadium, against the Phillies, where the guys in front of us kept making ridiculous bets with one another. I remember instructing my 2nd grade classmates on the spelling of John Tudor's name when we were composing fan mail in class. I remember Fredbird visiting our assembly at Chesterfield Elementary. I remember seeing Willie McGee patrolling center field in between Vince Coleman and Andy Van Slyke, which I still think is the greatest outfield I've ever seen. I remember thinking Coleman was the fastest human being on the planet. And I remember thinking Jack Clark was some sort of Colossus at the plate, even though his home run total of 22 is more than pedestrian by today's standards. I remember Tudor and Dwight Gooden going against each other with the division on the line when both had sub-2.00 ERAs. I remember envisioning the tarpaulin that ate Vince's leg as some sort of monster that lived under the Astroturf at Busch Stadium. I remember Ozzie's homer in game 5 of the NLCS, and Jack's in game 6. I remember wondering why my family wasn't watching game 7 of the World Series as it was still going on. I remember being dejected over the loss to the Royals but thinking how much would it matter because the Cardinals would go 101-61 and win the pennant every year from now on.

I don't know how good I'll be at updating this blog, but hopefully it will be a good place to park all the thoughts that don't quite fit elsewhere. I'm still trying to write for and update the SportsHistory website as much as I can. Look for future articles on the following:
- Coach John Gagliardi and his unique coaching style, which is an (almost certainly unintentional) acknowledgement of the fact that football teams are complex adaptive systems
- The ethics of professional participation in the Olympics
- Game theory and Cold War Olympic strategy
- Cricket: Friend or Foe?
- The St. Louis Rams: The Tech Bubble of the NFL
- A new way of scoring baseball games
- and a whole bunch more