The Bull-Moose Juju

As the first month of the baseball season drew to a close in 2012, the Gio Gonzalez trade looked like an inspiration. Stephen Strasburg was back and the Nationals had the best pitching in the National League. Davey Johnson was looking for offense and summoned Bryce Harper. Everything Mike Rizzo touched in 2012 turned to [...]

Hitters Fail the Quiz

Hey baseball fans! Sorry I haven’t posted in about five days. Anyway, I have a one question “quiz” for you. Who has the best mustache in Royals relief history, other than Al Hrabosky? The answer is, of course, Dan Quisenberry! Quisenberry played for the Royals, Cardinals, and Giants from 1979-1990. As a reliever, he was feared throughout [...]

Can They Keep Up Their Hot Starts?

The first third of the baseball season is just wrapping up and has already been marked by numerous injuries, slow starts, and surprises galore. In particular there are some players who have come out of relative obscurity and are well on their way to posting seasons beyond what even the most optimistic analysts predicted during [...]

Touring the Bases with Bart Zeller

Bart Zeller is a former major leaguer, who recently coached the Joliet Slammers to their first ever Frontier League championship. Bart is a great baseball man who obviously loves managing and actually still plays himself, all of which you will read about. I believe you will enjoy the great insight Bart gives about independent baseball, [...]

Not With a Bang

It is over: Alan Craig squeezes the fly in his mitt and at the mound the Cardinals, the team from out of nowhere, (yes, the Cardiac Cardinals, and why hasn’t someone used this tag already?) pile on. They are the champions of baseball for 2011. I had thought that the Cardinals might win Game Seven.  [...]

No Retirement in Site for Ageless Milo

As a broadcaster, Milo Hamilton doesn’t have to worry about his arms or legs giving out. He can still read his voluminous notes and talk about baseball with the best of them. Plus his voice still projects the dulcet tones that accompanied his call of Hank Aaron’s record 715th home run on April 8, 1974. [...]

If I Ran Baseball-Interleague Edition

Recently a few managers have come out against interleague play, stating the uniqueness has worn off, and that interleague play is tired.  I disagree.  I think it’s great that some interleague “traditions” have stuck around, like Cubs/White Sox, A’s/Giants, and Marlins/Rays.  Ok, so maybe Marlins/Rays isn’t the most exciting matchup, but it’s still the battle [...]

St. Louis vs. Cincinnati

How exactly did we get here?  How did we come from St. Louis and Cincinnati having just a passing thought in each other’s minds to a knockdown, dragout rivalry between the two squads and the two fan bases?  And, honestly, why is there such a rivalry, Johnny Cueto notwithstanding? The history of Cardinals and Reds [...]

A New Beginning, The Same Ending

In all the hoopla surrounding the start of the season, perhaps I misunderstood.  I thought we were turning the page to 2011, not reliving 2010.  Yet, for one game at least, a lot of last year’s issues reared their head in St. Louis. It was extremely frustrating to see how many two on, nobody out innings [...]

Final Cardinal Cuts

I’ve had a wonderful run of luck with my prognostications lately.  Seems like anytime I say X, Y actually happens and fairly quickly afterwards. Yesterday was another of those days, as Fernando Salas was sent to Memphis and Bryan Augenstein made the team.  I will admit that when the Cards plucked Augenstein from the waiver wire, I just [...]

Trying to Focus on the Positives

At his best Nyjer Morgan is a scrappy, prototypical lead off guy.  Diminutive in size, he plays with grit and determination. He hurt himself sliding head-first into second base one too many times a season ago. But in 2010 he committed a multitude of sins, not the greatest of which was running into the Cardinal [...]

10 Reasons You Should Already Be Especially Psyched for Opening Day

The smell of freshly laid sod, ballpark hot dogs and seven-dollar beer is in the air (or on the ground). Baseball season is quickly approaching, and fans everywhere — well, perhaps except for Houston, Pittsburgh and Seattle — are champing at the bit to find out how the 2011 MLB season will unfold. Opening Day [...]

The Calm After The Storm

Yesterday’s deadline came and went.  Albertageddon peaked yesterday morning, but by the end of the day had calmed back down.  Life goes on. The man himself showed up today at camp.  He spent a good half an hour talking to the press, in a situation reminiscent of Mark McGwire’s address to the media last spring training.  McGwire spoke [...]

Love Is In The Air

Today is a day of love.  That love that keeps you going, that warms you through the winter and sustains you in the summer.  The love that is always there, continuing to grow and evolve.  You have to have it, can’t live without it. Yes, my friends, today is Pitchers And Catchers Report Day.  I [...]

The All-Time St. Louis Cardinals (a draft book chapter)

Who would be selected for a mythical All-Time Cardinals dream team roster? And how have others answered this fun question throughout the years?

The Berkman Actuality

Regular reader(s) will remember that, last week, I wrote about the possibility that Lance Berkman would become a Cardinal.  My conclusion was that it wouldn’t happen and it didn’t work for the Cardinals. Yeah, this is why I don’t bet actual money on anything. As you know by now, the Cards came to terms with Berkman over [...]

Broken Promises

“I won’t lose again.” Adam Wainwright said those words two starts ago, upset with how he had been performing and looking at a four-game losing streak.  He was able to win last time out, continuing the vow, but last night, that promise was broken. The two-out problem bit the Cardinals again.  In the second, Wainwright had [...]

More Of The Same

It’s a little checklist that Cardinal fans go through before games, to prepare themselves for what is to come: Is the opposing pitcher someone the Cardinals haven’t seen much of? Check. Does the opposing pitcher have a high ERA? Check. Is the opposing pitcher lefthanded? Hey, he’s not!  Maybe they have a chance! Of course, [...]

Cardinals Get Off Script

We’ve seen it before.  Way too many times, in fact.  A miscue, a bad pitch, and suddenly the Cardinals are in a 3-0 hole early in the game, a hole that they don’t climb out of as they slog to another loss. Finally, someone got that script into rewrite. I was afraid we were in for [...]

“It Didn’t Look Like They Wanted To Come Out And Beat Us”

I think the title of this post says it all.  When a player on the opposing team questions the desire, there’s little else to say about the 2010 Cardinals. That was Geoff Blum’s quote to MLB.com after yesterday’s game.  ”It didn’t look like they wanted to come out and beat us at all.”  We talked about [...]

Another Lost Cardinal Weekend

What is left to say about this team?  We are using up all the possible words to describe what we are seeing out of this team that, on paper, is one of the most talented ever to play in St. Louis but, on the field, has a frustrating inability to not put bad teams away. [...]

Sigh-Inducing

Just when you start to believe in this team, to think that they’ve finally found that gas pedal on the team car, they stomp on the brakes.  A four game winning streak to get into first place?  Let’s follow that up with three losses against sub-.500 teams!  I feel like I’m a driving instructor. Of course, [...]

A Cautionary Note

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a bit, but before I could write about it Brian Burwell, for once, beat me to it.  There’s been a lot of optimism out of the sweep of Cincinnati, as well there should be.  However, I’m not sure we can say this team has turned the corner and the [...]

Sweeping Our Cares Away

Earlier this year, the Cardinals took the first two games from the Toronto Blue Jays on the road and sent out Adam Wainwright to complete the sweep.  Wainwright, though, had one of his rare off games and the Cards weren’t able to use the brooms. This time, though, Wainwright was able to seal the deal and [...]

Frustration Revisited

I thought this was behind us. Whatever corner the Cardinals turned after the All-Star break, they’ve turned another one or two and seem to be back where they started from–a frustrating team that can’t get anything going.  And when the big gun has an off night, you know things aren’t going your way. I guess you [...]

Gaining On The Off Day

The Cardinals hit the Big Apple yesterday.  They saw the sites (Ryan Franklin went to the Statue of Liberty with his family, according to the official Cardinal Twitter feed), made some appearances (more on Albert Pujols in a bit) and picked up a half-game on the Reds when Milwaukee beat them 3-2.  In other words, just [...]

Cardinals Continue To Roll

What’s been the most encouraging thing during this current Cardinal winning streak is that they keep winning in different ways.  The first couple of games, they slugged.  They’ve had good pitching performances.  They’ve had comebacks.  They’ve beaten pitchers that normally give them fits. Everything save the comebacks came into play last night.  OK, they didn’t really [...]

Cards Soar In Foreign Land

You know, when the discussion of launching pad stadiums comes up, I never think of Toronto’s Rogers Center.  Wrigley, Coors, even the old Atlanta stadium that started the nickname.  However, if last night is any indication, Rogers Center is right up there with the rest of them. The Cardinals played the long ball better, smashing [...]

Sweep Incomplete

Busy couple of nights at the ballpark, with most of the focus on the bump in the middle. First off, the Jeff Suppan return tour kicked off in a manner that didn’t shock me too much, though I will admit I didn’t think it’d be that strong.  You had a guy that’d made some adjustments, [...]

Cardinals Struggling In LA

You know, when the offense is clicking, you think things are just going to roll on forever.  However, even with an offense like the Cardinals’, when you take out a couple of pieces, the Jenga tower apparently falls down. Another game without David Freese or Colby Rasmus turns into a 1-0 loss.  Chris Carpenter deserved [...]

A Cardinal Weekend

The Cardinals had a good weekend against the Brewers, though it could have been better.  Their slipup last night on ESPN’s game of the week dropped them back into a tie for first.  I go over this series and the Reds series in my weekly column, but let’s take a look at them here as [...]

Another Brick in the Wall

Is Strasburg’s looming debut next Tuesday more important for the future of the Nationals, or Roy Oswalt’s admission on Tuesday of this week, that he would accept a trade to Washington? The two are inextricably linked.  Oswalt’s view that there are good things going on in Washington redounds to the excitement Strasburg is generating, but [...]

Laying An Egg

No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth or been thrown into some big glowing light on a remote island.  My work schedule has made it tough to blog this week and the Cardinals’ play has keep the motivation to blog down as well.  Let’s take a quick look at the Houston series [...]

That Night, They Were Men

Recently I was showing the photo album of my bar mitzvah to some long-lost cousins who only vaguely remembered attending it. Even with the help of the photos, I don’t remember all that much about it myself. I do know that it was the last time I ever spoke–much less chanted–in Hebrew. I ate, danced, [...]

Redbirds Roll Through Weekend

It was a very busy weekend for me, but the Cardinals did a lot of working as well.  By now you know all about the games, but let’s take a quick look at Thursday through Sunday to get our Heroes and our Goats.  (If you want a more in-depth look, my Week that Was column [...]

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