redbirdbrain

Well, I’m going through severe baseball withdrawal at this point. SEVERE. Especially as the news I’m getting from the Cardinals (the firings at KTRS - unfair! I love McGraw Milhaven even though I actually live in NYC and never listen!, the strange un-Jockettyesque signings of the last few weeks, etc) is all stuff I don’t want to think about. Frankly, I’m not even reading about it as much as I normally do. Instead, I’m still wading through this mutha (Just finished the historical segment - man, Bill James is cool).

My solution for the baseball blues? Right here. My personal record is 323.5, which I believe might be a home run in certain ballparks.

I’m trying to stop the sleazy friendster insanity that I’ve been living through for the past 24 hours (honestly, my roommate and I have both been going NUTSO on friendster all day), so I submit the following question.

I’m the proud winner of a Cardinals game download from 2005, courtesy of Bellyscratcher’s awesome Scrabble game. The question is, what should I ask for? I’ve decided for something during the regular season, and I’ve narrowed it down to the possibilities below (because those are the ones that popped into my head right away). I would just use blogpoll, but wordpress.com doesn’t seem to jive with the javascript the poll site requires. So just leave me a comment. Really. I desperately need some input here.

1. The Cardinals Home Opener; also known as the day the “Goodbye to Busch” insanity started
2. The 9th Inning Comeback Game against the Reds back in May
3. The Albert Pujols walkoff home run night; also known as the night Harry Potter came out; also known as the Precursor to the Miracle At Coogan’s Bluff Over the Crawford Boxes on October 17… I was busy waiting in line for the book and missed the whole drama
4. David Eckstein’s grand slam day, another game which I missed entirely
5. The final regular-season game at Busch (which of course, has the added bonus of belly and RHM smack to enjoy along with it)

Anyone else avoiding all the misery fogging the cardsblogosphere? This isn’t the first time I’ve had to do this, either. In early 2004, I had to quit reading Redbird Nation for awhile because it was too depressing. “DOOM AND GLOOM, DOOM AND GLOOM!” I’d say to myself upon seeing the latest post on the site. “Doom and gloom!” I’d interrupt when my sister mentioned how grim everyone thought the 2004 next season would be.

I said this stuff often, not because I had any foresight about how successful we’d be in 2004, but simply because I don’t want the Cardinals (one of my constant sources of fun and frolic) to make me sad even when they’re not playing. Isolated moments of self-pity? Of course. But the owners’ penny-pinching and the fans’ teeth-gnashing have gone so far, by this point, that I’ve decided to ignore the hot stove talk in the hopes that it will all go away. Which, of course, makes me Bill DeWitt’s ideal stupid, obedient fan.

(And with that, it becomes resoundingly clear to all involved that I shouldn’t have started a Cardinals blog during the offseason. If I refuse to talk about what’s going on, why on earth am I even updating? A question for the ages.)

Well, if you thought I was going to talk about the Hot Stove League and Bill DeWitt’s obvious determination to rub his pennies together so hard that Abe Lincoln is screaming in pain, then you are wrong. (Oooookay, that pinching pennies metaphor didn’t exactly work out for me. Moving along… )

I’m going back to the NLCS. Think Houston for a sec. Sigh, remember those days when there were baseball games? And the Cardinals were playing? And how we all came together to deride Minute Maid Park? And then Albert hit a homer during Game 5 way OVER the Crawford Boxes?

Oh. Sorry. Getting distracted.

Anyway, one of the books I read last month was Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, and one of the quotes in the book struck me.

Late in his career he scoffed when someone said Cleveland’s huge Municipal Stadium was a good park to pitch in. This was before an arbitrary fence was built across the vast outfield to encourage home runs. “Hell, that’s not pitching,” Ruth said. “That’s just throwing. Now the Polo Grounds, with those short foul lines, that’s pitching. I remember what it was like there. You couldn’t just throw the ball and let them hit flies. You had to think, you had to work the corners.”

Well, any ballpark that’s good enough for Babe Ruth is good enough for me. Since our modern equivalent is Minute Maid (I’ve never heard anyone else say this, but it sounds like exactly the sort of uninformed blanket statement I like to make, so I’m sticking with it), I’ll promise to stop bitching about the Crawford Boxes for one calendar year (and possibly beyond - we’ll see if the Babe’s words still ring true in a year’s time. If there’s too much pain and sorrow involved with the Crawford Boxes again, I won’t be able to contain myself.). This does not, however, mean I’m going to stop complaining about the train or the hill. A girl has limits.

So. My vows for next season are now currently the following:

1. No drinking beer while at any ballgame. Stadium beer is apparently lousy and overpriced (who knew?), and I need to learn to appreciate an afternoon/evening at the ballpark WITHOUT a cold, frosty one. I’m going cold turkey.
2. No making fun of Crawford Boxes.

Since these two goals are very negative and may singlehandedly ruin next season, I’ve decided to counter them with two more positive goals:

1. Have argument (in person) with at least one fan from every team in the majors. I think this is impossible (I’ve never even HEARD of a Tampa Bay fan, let alone met one), but I’m sure it will be a noble and very bloggable attempt. And if there’s any single city in the world I could accomplish this goal, it would be New York.
2. Uh, I’ll come up with more eventually. Any ideas? And if you say anything like “Understand Sabermetrics”, I’m going to clock you.

Soooo…. No Burnett for us. Sigh. Not that I care so much about Burnett in particular, but he was a clear upgrade. It just doesn’t look like there’s much out there to truly improve the team for 2006. And if we don’t get better, we’re certainly not going to win another pennant. I’m feeling so sorry for myself right now that I may as well be a Red Sox fan, circa mid-2004.

In other news, my sister and I have lately been discussing lboros and his offseason heroics. I mean, my god! The man is writing about four fantastic posts every day! (I don’t have a full time job, and I can’t even manage four posts a week.) Now, we never thought we’d like a site nearly as much as Redbird Nation. But VEB has slowly-but-surely become just as invaluable as RBN used to be. Which brings forth our abandonment complex: much as I adore lboros and Brian Gunn, I hate them for spoiling me like this! My sis and I now firmly believe that blogs this good just require too much time and effort to keep up forever.

So the Cardinals are never going to win the World Series again in my lifetime and all my favorite bloggers are going to quit. I think I’ll go eat some worms.

(I know, I know. I’m totally personifying Cardinal Little here. But see, it’s more fun to run around shouting “The sky is falling!” than you’d think. Try it.)

Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about this Busch tribute song?

(My reaction: At first I had no words. And then I realized that this is a joke, right? It MUST be a joke. Please, people, tell me this song is a joke.)

Last year, I decided that there was more to life than baseball and started doing a lot of other interesting activities during the offseason: seeing theatre and movies, reading novels, dating, drinking, dancing, and so on.

This offseason, I’ve decided to take a new tack by refusing to admit there’s anything more to life whatsoever (as you may have guessed from the post below). As I mentioned earlier, I’m mostly just reading baseball books.

On the one hand, this is a great way to learn about baseball history (all of a sudden, I’ve been incapable of going a whole week without listening to Russ Hodges scream “The Giants win the pennant!” on my iPod at least once). I can’t tell you how excited I got upon reading about the 1926 World Series in the Babe Ruth biography, or the 1946 pennant race in this book on the Dodgers. (Oh, all right. AND the various moments and characters that don’t involve the Cardinals, especially Jackie Robinson and the Black Sox.)

Problem is, this doesn’t in any way improve my knowledge of current baseball players. Truth? I hadn’t even heard of Jacques Jones until he started popping up in Cards trade discussion. This brought to my mind a little exercise: exactly how many players can I name from each major league franchise? I’ve decided to grab another glass of wine and go ahead and make a list. The rules are: 1) not to google anything, and 2) to list all players current as of today, Dec 1 2005. Here’s what I came up with.

AL East:

1. New York Yankees: As I live in New York, this one is easy. Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Jason Giambi, Bernie Williams, Hideki Matsui, Gary Sheffield, Jorge Posada, Tony Womack, Randy Johnson, Mike Mussina, Aaron Small, Chien Ming Wang, Mariano Rivera, Flash Gordon, Tino Martinez
2. Boston Red Sox: Ugh. Heeeere we go. Bill Mueller, Edgar Renteria, Kevin Youkilis, Tony Graffanino, Manny Ramirez, Johnny Damon, David Ortiz, Curt Schilling, Mike Timlin, Josh Beckett, Kevin Millwood, Mark Bellhorn
3. Toronto Blue Jays: Roy Halladay, B.J. Ryan
4. Baltimore Orioles: Steve Kline, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmiero
5. Tampa Bay Devil Rays: Dammit, and we even played them this year. Can’t think of a damn player. Hey, wasn’t Kevin Brown, who was mentioned in Moneyball, play for them now? Does that count?

NL East:

1. Atlanta Braves: Andruw Jones, Chipper Jones, Furcal (ooh, forget his first name - Rafael?), John Smoltz, Tim Hudson
2. Philadelphia Phillies: Aaron Rowand, Billy Wagner, Pat Burrell (because of this game alone)
3. New York Mets: Again, super-easy. Pedro Martinez, Victor Zambrano, Mike Piazza, Doug Mientkewicz, Jose Reyes, Kaz Matsui, Cliff Floyd, Victor Diaz, Carlos Beltran
4. Florida Marlins: I used to know more of them, but half the team is now traded away. Bastardos! Dontrelle Willis, A.J. Burnett
5. Washington Nationals: Cristian Guzman, Nick Johnson, Brad Wilkerson, Marlon Anderson

AL West:

1. L.A. Angels: Adam Kennedy, the dude who won the Cy Young whose name has slipped my mind (I’m on my third glass of wine, sue me - oh wait! Bartolo Colon, that is it, isn’t it? Don’t sue me after all!), Benjy Molina, the other Molina whose name has also escaped me, and probably some outfielders and reserve players
2. Oakland A’s: Danny Haren, Barry Zito, Estaban Loaiza, and a whole bunch of other fat misunderstood players Billy Beane could get on the cheap
3. Seattle Mariners: Ichiro, Adrian Beltre, and beyond that I’ve got no clue. I know at one point Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson played for them. Also I read a book by Jim Bouton about Seattle baseball once. Oh, and does Frasier count?
4. Texas Rangers: I’m staging a protest of this entire team because I’m annoyed with one of my ex-boyfriend-wannabes who lives in Dallas. I could say Alfonso Soriano, but I’m not going to.

NL West:

1. San Diego Padres: Woody Williams, Trevor Hoffman, Brian Giles, and the pitcher who hurt his rib in the division title celebration. Damn it, I know this one. Hmm, maybe another glass of wine will clear this up in my head…. [30 second pause. Inspiration strikes as I pour my wine] Aha! Jake Peavy!
2. San Francisco Giants: Mike Matheny, Barry Bonds, Moises Alou. Also I think they have some pitchers. Doesn’t Brett Tomko pitch for them? Am I on drugs, or is this right?
3. Los Angeles Dodgers: J.D. Drew, although he’s on the DL of course for a splinter in his left hand. Milton Bradley, Hee Seop Choi (who, by the way, I still have not forgiven for the Scott Rolen incident, hmph and double hmph)
4. Arizona Diamondbacks: John McCain - Oh wait. Just because he’s an interesting person from Arizona doesn’t mean that he has anything to do with baseball. Never mind. Um, hmm. I think there’s some pitcher I’ve heard of, who doesn’t want to pitch for the Diamondbacks anymore because it’s in the wrong time zone or something? I forget his name, though I think I discussed him with bellyscratcher at some point.
5. Colorado Rockies: Todd Helton, and a whole bunch of pitchers in purgatory.

AL Central:

1. Chicago White Sox: May I just take a moment to bitch about how the Cardinals didn’t get to meet them in the World Series? Hmph. Moving along, let’s go with Mark Buerhle, Paul Konerko, Bobby Jenks, and geez. I’m now too annoyed to continue talking about them.
2. Cleveland Indians: Can we just leave it at the cast of Major League? No? Ok, then… How about Jeff Metcalf from Homefront? How about Coco Crisp, does that guy count? Kevin Millwood? Bob Feller? Oh, who the hell cares. They’re apparently a whole bunch of scrappy, lovable, low-payroll types that are on fire (despite their annoying choke at the end of the season) and are supposed to be hot next season. If you want to read about the Cleveland Indians, go to freaking letsgotribe.com and leave me alone.
3. Minnesota Twins: Jacque Jones, Johan Santana, and those goddamn homer hankies. Batgirl is the patron saint of female bloggers, so I feel I should show respect here and not snark about how they might get moved to somewhere else because the Metrodome is so pathetic.
4. Detroit Tigers: My friend Jenny likes them, and I still haven’t figured out why. Isn’t it so unfair, by the way, that the Tigers have won a World Series more recently than the Cardinals have? As for current players - does Fernando Vina still play for them? No? Placido Polanco, then.
5. Kansas City Royals: Mark Teahen, who I know about from Moneyball and another article by Michael Lewis in the NY Times magazine on steroids. That’s all, though! (I do think I’ve shown admirable restraint in not mentioning Don Denkinger.)

NL Central:

1. Let’s skip the Cardinals, shall we? Although it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could name all 25 guys on the roster under the influence of 3.5 glasses of win. Er, wine.
2. Houston Astros: Roger Effing Clemens, Andy Effing Pettite, Roy goddamn mother-effing Oswalt, Wandy Effing Something or Other, Chris Effing Burke, Lance Effing Berkman, Larry Effing Bagwell, Craig Effing Biggio, Orlando Effing Palmiero, Brad Lidge.
3. Chicago Cubs: Derrek “Not quite the MVP” Lee, Nomar “Gimpy” Garciaparra, Kerry “Wuss” Woods, Carlos “Not crazy like a fox, crazy like an inmate of an asylum” Zambrano, Mark “Overrated” Prior, Corey “Mr. Lack of OBP, USA” Patterson, John “I’m a Cardinal in my soul” Mabry, Aramis “I’m a cub, so I deserve a generic insult” Ramirez, Ryne “I may not be a cub any longer, but at least I now publish an idiotic editorial on yahoo!” Sandberg
4. Milwaukee Brewers: Ben Sheets, Lyle Overbay and a whole bunch of other not-quite-good-but-we’ll-threaten-the-status-quo-next-year type players. I, as an arrogant Cardinals fan, have decided to refuse that the Brewers are actually a threat to any team but the Cubs.
5. Cincinnati Reds: Red Hot Mama, who may not be the Patron Saint or the Pope of Girl Bloggers, but is, at the very least, the Cardinal of the NL Central Chickbloggers Association, (Haha, geddit? I just called her a Cardinal! See that’s funny, because I don’t think she’d like being called a Cardinal… oh. My wine glass is empty.) and my favorite in terms of Redsblogging, bouncing Jim Edmonds photos, and female blogging in general. Yes, I like her better than Batgirl. Yes, I am buying her book as soon as I get a job. Yes, this is what you call a girl crush. I refuse to apologize for girlcrushes, all right?…. Ok, where was I? Oh yeah, the Reds. Eric Milton (in honor of RHM, I’m not going to mention the fact that John Milton would probably have been a better signing), Willy Mo Pena (in honor of RHM, I’m not going to mention that no other team actually thinks he’s good trade material), Ken Griffey (in honor of RHM, I’m not going to mention that he’s even more of a pansy than J.D. Drew), Adam Dunn (in honor of RHM, I’m not going to mention his strikeouts), Javier Valentin (in honor of RHM, I’m just going to say that I doubt I’d ever have known who this guy was without RHM’s ingenious graphics)
6. Pittsburgh Pirates: (Aaaaaaand ah, the assignment comes to a close. I didn’t originally intend this to be a “geez, ju- er, redbirdbrain sure turns into an idiot when she drinks!” sort of post, but I suppose that’s the way it ended up. Don’t thank me, thank yellowtail shiraz-cabernet.) Zach someone-or-other, that hot pitcher. Is it Greinke or Morris? I have no idea. But I do think that there’s a Zach playing for the Pirates. All I can think of off the top of my head.