CardNilly

Anyway, so I wanted to talk a little about the Jackie Robinson #42 thing that’s going on this weekend. The big big backstory, for those of you who were either born yesterday or have been living in a cave raised by wolves and have for some reason just stumbled across this website on your first foray into this crazy interweb thing: Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947, which was a fairly earthshaking event when it comes to America’s social history. I think there’s a solid argument to be made that Jackie Robinson is the #2 figure in the public’s imagination when it comes to civil rights and race relations in America. That’s something for baseball to be proud of and ashamed of at the same time: proud that such an important figure in America’s social fabric came from baseball, but ashamed that there had to be someone like Jackie in the first place.

The more recent backstory — in an attempt to honor Robinson on the sixtieth anniversary of his first appearance, Ken Griffey Jr. (who can essentially do no wrong in my book — I’m a huge fan) got permission from Rachel Robinson to wear #42 on April 15th. She said yes, Junior asked Selig and Company for permission, and they — to their credit — recognized a fantastic idea when it hit them in the face. So the head honchos said, in effect, that this was such a good idea that any player who wanted to could wear the number. Reaction was quite favorable, with a ton of players planning on wearing #42 to honor (in addition to Mo Rivera, who wears it every game). Here’s the full list, as of yesterday anyway.

Not everyone thinks this is such a snazzy idea, though. It’s been a little controversial. Some of these critiques have been so baffling to me, though, that I’m going to do what I nearly never do — defend a Bud Selig policy against all comers.

The first, and in my mind silliest, criticism is that this is a lousy idea because no one will be able to tell the players apart if they’re all wearing the same number. I first heard this complaint from Joe Aiello on the podcast Big League Baseball Report (recently agglomerated into a new podcast called The Pitch — Aiello also writes at View From The Bleachers), and later echoed by Al Hrabosky on a FSN broadcast. I think this is ludicrous — you haven’t needed a scorecard to tell who the players are for a long long time, and anyone that can’t tell the difference between Albert Pujols and David Eckstein just because they’re wearing the same number has bigger issues than that particular confusion. How do people consume baseball games these days? If it’s on the radio, then the numbers don’t matter at all. If it’s on the TV, then the producers are doing the player identification thing for you. If it’s on the internet, then the numbers aren’t an issue at all — I’m not even sure if they’re displayed on most gamecasts. If you’re at the park, there’s enough information provided to you by the scoreboard monkeys that you don’t need the numbers. Not sure who’s on deck? Check the giant lineups displayed in the outfield. Not sure who’s warming up? Watch the scoreboard above the bullpen. It’s possible this was a tongue-in-cheek complaint, but it didn’t seem like it.

Aiello was also suspicious of the entire enterprise because he thought it was going to be a marketing ploy — that folks were just going to buy A-Rod jerseys with #42 on the back because of their extreme cooliosity or some such. Which is silly, again, on a bunch of levels: there’s no indication that MLB is going to go ahead with a sales rush of, say, Carlos Lee #42 Astros Jerseys or the like; there’s really no reason to believe that an A-Rod #42 jersey gets you more street cred than an A-Rod #13 jersey; and if you really want one that bad, you can personalize one yourself. Heck — YOU could be #42! (If you do the podcast thing, tune in to the Big League Baseball Report or The Pitch or whatever it is and see how you react to Aiello. Both hosts are unabashed Cubs fans and total homers, which isn’t that big a deal, really. They don’t pretend to be anything else… But Aiello generally comes out with two or three stupefyingly short-sighted comments per podcast — the type of things where his co-host asks him “Seriously?” right afterward. I still listen anyway, in large part because the guests on the show are so good, but I’m curious as to whether I’m alone in this impression…)

MO Boiler over at the Birdwatch has a more nuanced complaint on the same general topic. His take is that the general Jackie Robinson hoopla, when viewed in connection with the Civil Rights Game down in Memphis, could be seen as a cynical play to capture the hearts and minds of the black youth of the country. Sez the Boiler, in part:

Other sports aside, note the absence of a similar magnitude of official MLB server space devoted to Minnie Minoso or Roberto Clemente, two pioneering Latin players of the same era. Why? Perhaps it’s because baseball has a wide following in Latin America, and the Latin minority is much better represented among its players (29.4% according to the same UCF study quoted in the Post-Dispatch). The Latin market doesn’t need the investment to give MLB the return it wants, so MLB has decided to spend its money on African-Americans in the hope that they will return the favor. It’s not the only reason for Jackie Robinson Day, but you’ll have a hard time convince this baseball fan that the marketing aspect of the day doesn’t play a part in MLB’s decision to promote it as much as they have.

Go read the whole post, because there’s some logic in there that’s not evident in what I’ve excerpted. I’m skeptical, though — on points both nit-picky (Minoso and Clemente, though important figures in the baseball landscape, simply don’t measure up when compared to Robinson’s significance) and larger in scope. I don’t think this is a naked money grab like the Extra Innings deal. I think that this is one of those few areas where the folks who run baseball recognize that there are things that go above and beyond the bottom line — not many things, mind you, but a few here and there. One of them is race relations in America and baseball’s historic place in that dialogue. Baseball has an obligation to honor one of the great figures — in all of American history, in my opinion — and if that means they have to devote some resources to it in terms of manpower and techie resources, then so be it. It, frankly, is the right thing to do, and in this one particular instance, I think that’s enough.

There’s a deeper analysis here that may have merit, though. As MO Boiler points out, baseball has been hemorrhaging black talent for quite a while now, for any number of reasons. All this publicity, even if it’s not expressly designed to wring more money out of the African-American communities, serves as public good will — raising the visibility and reputation of baseball in those communities. It’s like AB and Channel 5 sponsoring the local Race for the Cure — they don’t get anything out of it directly, but it’s a good thing to do and their reputation is enhanced. Is it cynical for MLB and AB and Channel 5 to do that? Hard to tell, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for things like this. Which maybe makes me a sucker, I guess…

The final critique of the situation is one raised by Torii Hunter of the Twins, who says that entire teams wearing the number kills the meaning, and that “It should be special wearing Jackie’s number, not just because it looks cool.” Which, fair, at least as far as that last quote anyway. I certainly don’t agree with the first statement, though. I’ve heard a couple of interviews with Torii — the one on PTI the other day and the embedded clip in the article linked to above — in which he comes very very close to saying that the only players who should be allowed to wear the number are black players and the entire Dodgers team. Simply put, I don’t think that the only way you can honor and respect and be inspired by Jackie Robinson is if you are black. While it may resonate more deeply with black players, admiration for the man and his accomplishments ought to be universal. To claim that you can’t honor the person who tore down race barriers because you are of the wrong race is, to my mind, flatly incorrect.

I’m proud that the Cardinals decided as a team to wear #42. We’ve heard a lot last the few years about playing “Cardinal Baseball,” sort of the equivalent of the Oriole Way. Generally Cardinal Baseball is talked about in terms of playing a hard nine or doing all the fundamentals correctly, but in my mind it also comes with a healthy respect for baseball history. You can hear it in the players’ voices when they talk about having all the Cardinal greats from years past around during spring training and throughout the year. There was an anecdote a couple years ago about how respectfully the Cardinals received Buck O’Neill when he came into their clubhouse. Tony’s been quite open about how he wants to respect and honor Cardinal history and baseball history in general. Wearing #42 is an important gesture, both in light of the franchise’s history with Robinson and those Ron Gant rumors from a while back. Well played by all.

Preview after the jump! While you’re jumping, check out Goold’s post about the importance of #42, if you haven’t read it already.

Read the rest »

You take the good, you take the bad — you take them both, and there you have the facts of life. The facts of life… Or so I’m told, anyway. Point/Counterpoint: Wells was awesome/Carp is out for a while more. Pujols’ bat starts to wake up/Taguchi continues to suck with the glove. Hawksworth gets the opportunity to have his first cuppa coffee/We have to bring up Hawksworth for an emergency start. I’ll leave that with the singular “start” right now — no one right now on the outside has any idea whether we’re going to need to make it plural any time soon.

Eeesh.

Good news is that we’re going to Pittsburgh, where the Cardinals have owned the Pirates in PNC. Bad news is that the Pirates have been playing really well so far, with a bunch of late clutch wins. Good news is that it’s still quite early in the year, and that hot streak from the Pirates is due in large part to the collective ineptitude of the Houston bullpen. On to the short series preview!

Monday: Braden Looper (0-1, .320 OBA, 4.50 ERA) vs. Ian Snell (0-0, .182, 3.00)

Cardinals batters against Snell: 64 AB, .344/.432/.766. No typo there — this roster has a collective 1.198 OPS against Snell. And if you don’t count the collective 0 for 16 from Encarnacion, Miles, Spiezio, Reyes and Rolen those numbers will spike up. Like a lot. Bad news for Bucco fans: Yady is 5 for 10 with a double and two homers, Jimmy is 3 for 6 with a couple homers, and Dunc is 3 for 5 with a double. This one’s the kicker, though: Albert is 4 for 6 against Snell, with all four of those hits going for homers. That’s a line of .667/.750/2.667, by the way. It’s a good, good thing that Albert’s bat started to wake up yesterday — he’s due for a little incandescent streak to get his numbers back up where they ought to be, and Pittsburgh is a likely place for that to start.

Pirates batters against Looper: 44 AB, .114/.163/.114. Huh. That’s incredible. We’re probably gonna see some serious regression to the mean here, but wow… Three guys have hits against Looper — Castillo (2 for eight), Cota (2 for 4), and Duffy (1 for 3). Everyone else is a collective 0 for 29. Again, a Suppan Special here would be just fine by me: six IP, 3 runs, close game. Small sample size warning for both pitchers here…

Tuesday: Blake Hawksworth (0-0, .000, -.–) vs. Tom Gorzelanny (1-0, .318, 3.60)

Cardinals hitters against Gorzelanny: NA. We’ve never seen Tom, so no one’s got a track record against him. Here’s his write up from BPro2007 (what — you don’t have your copy yet? Go get it now! Worth every penny!):

Gorzelanny was placed on the 15-day disabled list on the same day for the same problem [elbow tendonitis] as Mike Gonzalez. Unlike Gonzalez, he came back after the minimum and looked none the worse for wear, pitching well enough to put the Pirates in a position to win in his last eight starts. With proper support, he’s got the potential to post the kind of won-loss record that would put him on the baseball map. It should be noted, however, that his BABIP was exceedingly low for a pitcher having to cope with the Pirates defense. That number will rise in 2007 as more balls evade Pirate leather and roll, unmolested, to a gentle stop somewhere in the grass. That’s why PECOTA is predicting Gorzelanny to add nearly a run to his ERA.

I’ve always liked Gorzelanny just because to my untrained ears “Gorzelanny” and “Grudzielanek” are the same name, really. Like Schmidt and Smith, right? I don’t know what the root meaning is for either of those — anyone out there with some knowledge of Eastern European languages with any insight here?

Pirates hitters against Hawksworth: NA. Since he hasn’t pitched any innings above AA, obviously there’s no track record for the Pirates. Heck, it might not even be his start — VEB’s got the insight as to some of the other possible contenders. Hawksworth doesn’t get a full blurb in BPro2007, and my copies of the earlier editions of BPro are in storage. Here’s all I’ve got saber-scouting-wise on Hawksworth:

Blake Hawksworth has made some nice strides since labrum surgery in 2004, but his strikeout rate hasn’t come all the way back just yet. He’s got a good curve and change and lots of movement on his fastball.

In August of last year, VEB had an interview with Blake. It’s a good read, and evidently Hawksworth is rocking the IronBill like Kid Reyes. It doesn’t look any less funky on him. Erik at Future Redbirds has a much much better capsule summary of Hawk than what you can get here. See? That’s what the blogosphere does for you — allows you to pick and choose from all the Cardinal goodness out there! We’re here for you!

[UPDATE #2: Randy Keisler instead of Hawksworth? Fine, then. Randy Keisler. I know absolutely nothing about him, and here’s the BPro2007 quip:

Randy Keisler has to be a left-handed pitcher, doesn’t he? Can you imagine somebody named “Randy Keisler” playing shortstop, or center field? Anyway, he’s made for Triple-A and he’s signed with the Cardinals.

Elucidating, huh?]

[UPDATE: Huh. The two-game series is next week. How about a Wednesday preview, too?]

Wednesday: Wainwright (1-0, .217, 1.29) vs. Maholm (0-1, .333, 7.29)

Cardinals hitters against Maholm: 45 AB, .311/.404/.444. Albert’s reign of terror continues: 3 of 5, double, homer. And, actually, this is really So Taguchi’s reign of terror — strangely, he’s 4 for 7 with a double. That probably gets him a start, huh? P-Dub’s 2 for 5, and since Maholm’s a lefty and Duncan’s 0 for 2 against him, that probably means that Preston gets the start on Wednesday, too. Yady, Skip, and Miles are a collective 0 for 7. Bennett’s 1 for 3, so maybe this is a day-game-after-a-night-game start for Gary, too. If we take the first two games of the series, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see one of TLR’s patented scrub lineups — rest the regulars, get the bench useful playing time, that sort of thing. Maholm wigs me out, just because mentally I was prouncing him name something like “Muh-home”. Right? Makes sense. But I caught one of his starts last year, and the announcers were pronouncing his name “Mah-Hollum,” like, rhymes with Gollum. And I’ve never heard anyone pronounce his name since, so I’ve been in a state of cognitive dissonance ever since. It’s a personal problem…

Pirates batters against Wainwright: 16 AB, .313/.389/.375. Small sample size stuff and all that, of course. Can’t extrapolate nothing from sixteen at-bats… Castillo is 1 for 4, Jack Wilson is 2 for 3, Jason Bay and Jose Bautista are each 0 for 2, Chris Duffy’s 1 for 2, Freddy Sanchez has a double in his only at-bat, and Nate McLouth and Humberto Cota are each 0 for 1. Also, Adam LaRoche has a walk in his only plate appearance. Nothing too bad, nothing too great. Wainwright’s first start this year was a good’un — I feel like this is a chance to extend that streak. Lotsa young and unproven starters in this series, huh? I wonder how these numbers will evolve over the course of the year…

Well, I could have gotten this up last night, but it would have been while Duncan and Wainwright were taking it to Wandy, and here was my dilemma: If my preview just magically happened to note that, even though Dunc has been pretty terrible against lefties like all the time, he was clearly and obviously due for a breakout last night, I’d be outed as a fraud (I’m trying to keep that secret a while longer, thank you.). But — if my preview didn’t note that Dunc and Rufus were gonna have great nights, then what point would there be to reading the thing?

Thus, I can shield myself from such terrible situations by simply ignoring that last night happened, for preview purposes anyway, and charging forward with the remainder of the series.

Saturday: Anthony Reyes (0-0, .000 OBA, -.– ERA) vs. Roy Oswalt (0-0, .179 OBA, 1.17 ERA)

Cardinal batters against Oswalt: 294 AB, .272/.307/.408. See, I thought this was going to be a lot worse. Part of that is that I live in something of a state of primal fear when it comes to having the Cardinals face Roy Oswalt. We just never seem to do well against him, though that cumulative line suggests that we do much better than the rest of the league against RoyO. Maybe it’s just that the Final Game at Old Busch is seared into my memory, when Roy singlehandedly took the Astros to the World Series after Pujols hit the Lidgebreaker the night before. Oswalt’s just one of those guys that I never like the Cards to have to face, though I tend to like him a lot when he’s not facing the Cards (I went to college in Houston when Roy was just coming up. I have a soft spot in my heart for a lot of those Astros — Biggio, Bagwell, Oswalt, BillyWags, and especially Berkman. Whatever. It’s a personal problem.).

Anyway: These guys done good against Roy — Spiezio (4 for 9, double, homer), Eck (12 for 29, two doubles), and Albert (20 of 64, four doubles, three homers). Dunc’s gone kind of high risk/high reward against him — 2 for 7, double, homer. That’s a .286/.375/.857 line. Sounds like a start to me, right? And Tony’s going to have to choose which hitless wonder he wants to start — Taguchi and Schumaker are both two for three with a couple singles. P-Dub is just .200/.273/.250 in twenty at bats, so methinks that doesn’t bode well for him today, but maybe he’s got an axe to grind against Houston and company that Tony’s willing to bet on today. Who knows anymore… Other stinkers of note include Yady (.154/.154/.154 in thirteen ABs), Bennett (.133/.133/.133 in fifteen ABs), and Miles (1 for 11). Kennedy’s never seen him, which I can’t imagine is a good thing.

Astros hitters against Reyes: 39 ABs, .282/.333/.462. Feast or Famine, folks. Feast: Biggio — 2 for 4, double, homer; Burke — 2 for 5, two doubles; Mike Lamb — 2 for 3. Famine: Ensberg — 0 for 6, Everett — 0 for 4, CLee — 2 for 8. Reyes worries me a bit. I just don’t know that he’s all the way there in terms of approach yet. Kind of a “good arm, suspect head” thing. I mean, not as bad as a Garrett Stephenson or a Jason Marquis, but it seems to me like when he’s not hitting on all cylinders it’s because he’s not in the right place mentally. Walking too many guys, trying to make pitches too perfect, whatever. The thing that makes me more optimistic about him than the aforementioned flameouts is that these mental lapses appear to be more a product of being a young kid. With Garrett and Jason, it was much more about their machismo — that they had to do it their way or no way at all. If everything clicks for Kid Reyes today, we could have a pretty good pitchers’ duel on our hands, particularly with how these two offenses have been performing so far. If not, then, well… It could get lopsided pretty quickly.

Sunday: Kip Wells (0-1, .238 OBA, 3.00) vs. Jason Jennings (0-0, .227, 1.50)

Cardinals hitters against Jennings: 150 AB, .227/.329/.333. For someone who has been floating around the majors for so long, I really don’t have any opinion about Jennings one way or the other. I don’t like or dislike him, or even really know anything about him. That he was the big pitching piece for Houston — the guy to make up for the loss of Pettitte and probably Clemens — seems like a bit of a stretch to me. That’s not to say that he’s a bad pitcher or anything like that. Heck, he’s totally got the whammy on Jimmy (1 for 24) and Yady (0 for 15). That collective 1 for 39 does a great deal to drag down the total rate stats (Bennett, Carp, Kennedy and Miles are an additional collective 0 for 9), which means that everyone else is doing pretty okay. Albert is 9 for 26 with a couple homers, Rolen is 5 for 16 with a couple doubles and a homer, and Eckstein and Gooch are each 3 for 10. Bizarrely, we’re really missing these two bats in the lineup: Juancion (5 for 13, double, homer) and Mulder (!) (4 for 10). No result here would surprise me, really. I just have no expectations of Jennings one way or another.

Astros batters against Wells: 256 AB, .270/.345/.461. I was really thinking that this was going to be much worse, since the Astros got to prey upon Wells when he was a Pirate. And to an extent, it’s true. Three guys to watch out for: Berkman (11 for 30, double, triple, four homers), Lamb (9 for 24, four doubles, two homers), and CLee (8 for 24, two doubles, two homers). Wells has Adam Everett’s number (but who doesn’t? 7 for 32, double), and everyone else is just kind of meh. Interestingly enough, there’s a severe dropoff for the five guys who have seen him least: Lane (2 for 20), Loretta (2 for 13), OPalmeiro (2 for 8), RoyO (0 for 3), Woody (0 for 2), and Burke (0 for 2). I’m not sure how much you can read into that, but there’s some silver linings, anyway. My expectations for Wells are very very similar to Jeff Suppan, another former Pirate. If we can get six innings with three runs given up, I think he’s done a good job. Anything more is gravy.

Happy Easter!

Preview will be coming up later today — I’ve got a last-minute subbing gig today, so that’ll occupy me until later on this afternoon. (See what I did there? I made substituting sound all cool and stuff by calling it a “gig”. Yeah. Gig. Hip, baby!)

Quick thoughts on the Opening Series? Bleah. The play was sloppy, the roster’s weaknesses showed, and the offense was merde. Bright sides are these: The Mets are clearly a better team, and we really didn’t have any business beating them anyway. (Picture a Mets fan screaming right now about how that was true last October, too… Meh.) Plus, it’s just one series in April. If it hadn’t been the opening one, the beatdown wouldn’t have seemed quite so severe. Fairly severe, yes. But not gnashing-of-teeth-and-rending-of-garments severe.

Anywho — Preview will be up later today. Hopefully ESPN has their probable pitching matchups correct finally. When I checked yesterday, ESPN told me that Carp was going today…

As I have done for the last couple years, I’ll be attempting to do a preview for each of the series this year. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, right? Especially since the last NL Preview I did was for the Mets. As always, the information is taken from ESPN’s batter vs. pitcher pages for each respective pitcher. The cumulative rate lines are for the members of the Cards’ 40-man roster, so guys like Juan Encarnacion will show up even though there is zero chance he’ll be batting against Glavine tonight. Last year there were a lot of Larry Bigbie sightings in the cumulative rate lines, so there’s some grains of salt involved, as usual. Also, playoff appearances don’t show up for some reason.

Credit where it’s due: I swiped this idea a couple years ago from Ducksnorts, the excellent Padre blog. It’s morphed a mite since then, but still…

April Fool’s articles from Met- and Cardblogs: Fungoes, Gateway Redbirds, Get Up, Baby!, and Faith and Fear in Flushing.
I’ll have more interesting content about the season and the Cardinals v.2007 coming over the next week. Last week was a bear, so we’ll just delay everything a bit, okay?

Anyway — on to the preview!

Sunday: Carpenter (0-0, .000 OBA, -.– ERA) vs. Glavine (0-0, .000 OBA, -.– ERA)

Cardinals batters against Glavine: 206 AB, .301/.389/.388. Good stuff: Rolen — 19 for 53, 6 doubles, two homers; Albert — 9 of 20; Bennett — 6 of 15. Bizarrely, Juancion also has a good line (13 of 36, two doubles), but that’s not really an issue. Not such good stuff: P-Dub — 9 for 44, double, homer; Jed — 4 for 19; Gooch — 1 for 9. Small sample stuff: Eck is 0 for 4, Miles is 0 for 2, Yady is 1 for 2. Yady’s also batting fifth tonight, so he’s got that going for him, which is nice. Glavine’s limited the damage over the years — only twelve extra base hits given up, and eight of them were from Rolen. Maybe it’s a singles attack tonight, huh?

Read the rest »

Been looking for a way to make a different statement in the Sea of Red while also helping out a local business — and getting that last charitable deduction before tax time? Consider joining The Red Army!

So this is the situation — a local T-shirt company, Half Empty Clothing, decided that they wanted to capitalize on the passion of Cards fans in order to help the local community. So Half Empty did a couple things: First, they came up with a line of T-shirts that showed that passion: “Cards fans are like an army! And they’re red! And we get the vaguely threatening communist overtones for free! Woo!”. Second, they thought — “Hm. Who in the local community could use some support as they help others? Hey, when I was without power this summer after the terrible storms and the massive Ameren incompetence, who helped me out? It was the Red Cross! And they’re red, too! Bonus!”. So they called up the local chapter of the Red Cross and agreed that Half Empty would donate half of the net proceeds of their sales of that T-shirt line to the local chapter.

Then they needed to get out the word about it. Fortunately, I am cheap and easy, so a complimentary XL was all it took for me. I’m proud to report that the shirt fits well and is comfy! For those among you who are status conscious, there are three different “ranks” — geddit? — which correspond to price/donation level. I’m a five star general, suckas!

Anyway, if you:

1. Want to help out a good cause,
2. Want to help out a local business, and
3. Want to have something red and unique to wear to Cards games or to mow the lawn or whatever,

then go to www.stlredarmy.com and hook yourself up.

Oy.

The story was broken by local news (and by Alex Fritz on the blogosphere), but evidently TLR was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence early this morning in Jupiter, Fla. The news has just hit the wire services, but the local Paper of Record doesn’t have anything yet.

Jupiter evidently has a rule that folks who are jailed for that offense have to spend a minimum of eight hours in jail (sensible rule, that…). Evidently those eight hours are going to come to an end soon (one wire service says he was booked at 4am local, which means a release at 12 noon eastern). Which means that every local camera crew is currently busting their hump to get over to Jupiter PD to get a TLR perp walk.

This one’s gonna get a little crazy, I think… Here’s my official position on it, I think: People make mistakes, and no one got hurt — but man, this wasn’t a good mistake to make. The Cards’ damage control team hasn’t had all that much work lately. Time to see if they’re rusty or not, I guess.

*sigh* Not good news…

UPDATE: Deadspin’s all over it, of course.

#45: Bob Gibson (1960-1975, 1995 (coach))

Also worn by: Gordon Jones (1954-56), Dick Littlefield (1956), Bob Smith (1957), Von McDaniel (1957-58), Bill Wight (1958), Dean Stone (1959)

This post scared me.

Still does, actually.

Not because I didn’t think I could write about Gibson as a player, because that’s actually relatively easy. He was great. Damn great. Look at the numbers, and you’ll know. Look at 1968, in particular — 1.12 ERA (which every Cards fan knows by heart), 0.85 WHIP, 258 ERA+ — and this was over THREE HUNDRED INNINGS. MVP, Cy Young.

They changed the rules of the game because of him (and others who were not as good as him).

His Hall of Fame plaque says:

ROBERT GIBSON
ST. LOUIS N.L., 1959-1975
FIVE TIME 20-GAME WINNER. HIS 3,117
STRIKEOUTS MADE HIM ONLY 2ND PITCHER TO
REACH 3,000. FIRST TO FAN 200 OR MORE IN
A SEASON 9 TIMES. SET N.L. MARK WITH 1.12
ERA IN 1968, HURLING 13 SHUTOUTS. TWICE
WORLD SERIES MVP, SETTING RECORDS FOR
CONSECUTIVE VICTORIES (7), CONSECUTIVE
COMPLETE GAMES (8), AND STRIKEOUTS IN A
GAME (17) AND A SERIES (35). VOTED N.L.
MVP IN 1968 AND CY YOUNG AWARD WINNER IN
1968 AND 1970. WON NINE GOLD GLOVE AWARDS.

I can’t do better than that in 88 words. (Apologies if the formatting’s screwed up on that — depends on your screen width. Sorry!)

But that’s not enough, when you get down to it. I’d argue that Bob Gibson is the second-most important Cardinal ever, and I’m open to arguments that he’s the most important. Stan’s #1 in my mind, and the gap down to #3 is so big that I’m not even sure who it would be.

Yeah, Gibson’s the best pitcher ever to don the Birds on the Bat, and he’d end up toward the top of the list because of that alone. But he stands for more, fundamentally. Had he put up his numbers with the demeanor and appearance of, say, Greg Maddux, I think he wouldn’t be anywhere near as beloved or respected.

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Non-baseball, for sure. This is by no means an original idea, but for the girlfriend’s family’s bracket pool, I’m submitting a bracket based solely on who would win in a fight between the teams’ mascots. Here are the results, with annotations:

Play-in game:

• Florida A&M Rattlers vs. Niagara Purple Eagles — Who looks like they’re winning on the Mexican Flag? The Eagle, that’s who. Niagara.

Midwest First Round:

• Florida Gators vs. Jackson State Tigers. A toughie. Tigers like to swim, but Gators rule in the water. Since the game is on dry land, though, Tigers win. If New Orleans floods again, then I reserve the right to change my opinion. Jackson State.
• Arizona Wildcats vs. Purdue Boilermakers. People with tools beat animals. Purdue.
• Butler Bulldogs vs. Old Dominion Monarchs. People beat animals. Especially kings (even if it looks like their logo is actually a crowned lion. Lions beat dogs, too, so no worries here.). Old Dominion.
• Maryland Terrapins vs. Davidson Wildcats. I know I’m supposed to Fear the Turtle, but feral cats beat turtles. Davidson.
• Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs. Winthrop Eagles. People beat animals. Animals beat leprechauns, though. So is the mascot a leprechaun, or sweeping generalization regarding an ethnic stereotype? I say it’s the tiny magical creature. Winthrop.
• Oregon Ducks vs. Miami OH RedHawks. Hawks have talons and sharp beaks and predatory instincts and stuff. Ducks don’t. Miami OH.
• UNLV Rebels vs. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. People beat insects, unless the mascot is the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels Who Are Coincidentally Allergic To Insect Stings. Go RRWACATIS! UNLV.
• Wisconsin Badgers vs. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders. People beat animals. TAMU-CC’s logo looks like it might be a wave or the tide or something, but badgers can’t swim, so it doesn’t matter either way. TAMU-CC.

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So I’m back, yep. 2006, in addition to being the year of the Surprise Championship, was also the year of the unannounced CardNilly hiatus. Sorry about that.

All throughout this winter, I’ve had folks come up to me and say something to the tune of “Dood, what’s up with the blog thing? Are you going to start writing again?” The response was always something like, “Probably, yeah.” No one really ever asked why I wasn’t writing at the moment, though, which I think is the more important question. Why, then? I was inspired to start writing after the Cards’ 2004 World Series debacle, so why the opposite reaction after the wonderful conclusion to 2006? (After all, lots of others were inspired to start writing — over on the left, I’ve linked to new Cardblogs 420 South 8th St., And That’s A Winner, Rabid Redbird, Rockin’ the Red, That’s a Winner (different from the other one), and Whiteyball, for a couple examples…) I’m not quite sure, but here are some of my working theories:

For one summer, I did data entry for a grant in my university’s political science department. Aside from learning more than I ever wanted to about committee politics in state legislatures in the early 1900s, I also amused myself by listening to streaming radio, which was still a newfangled sort of thing back then. You could get the Cardinals games for free from KMOX over the internet back then, but there was nothing else on during the day besides Jim Rome’s radio show. Say what you want about him as a person or as a radio host, but I thought his instructions to his callers were good: Have a take, don’t suck. When I started doing the blogging thing, I promised that I would follow those same instructions. Have a take — actually have something useful, interesting, and original to say — and don’t suck — try to say things in an interesting and effective manner.

After Brandon Inge whiffed on Rufus’s slider, I suddenly didn’t have a whole lot to say. The Cards won the whole thing, and they really probably shouldn’t have. Yes, yes, they got hot at the right time and all that, but the eventual championship was less about roster construction and talent and more about the dice coming up the right way for us. There’s only so many ways you can say that, though.

There are even fewer ways to figure out what to do in the offseason. If all of those player moves that I hated managed to come up right in the end, if all of those subpar performers came up clutch in the playoffs, then who was I to question those moves? The only response needed is really the only important one: Scoreboard, baby. It worked, they won, so suck on that, you anonymous blogger!

Fair is fair. The Cards still exist in a state of grace for me, where they can do no wrong. I suspect this won’t last all that long once the season actually starts. But for now, no complaints from me about the complete and total lack of a fifth starter, or a dangerously suspect outfield, or another short scrappy white guy at second base (I like Adam Kennedy, but I don’t like like him, you know?).

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