long time no blog

according to statcounter, i have been getting traffic despite my extended absence from the workd of cardinal blogging. that's fantastic. i just got done watching via gameday our seventh straight loss, so i figured there was no way the rabid redbird curse was in effect, as i haven't posted an entry since june or before.

a bit of update. the missus and i have moved back to my homeland of knoxville, tn. we have cable for the first time, so we have seen almost as many cardinal games since we got back as we had for the last two years, at least on television. i was lucky enough to get to watch our dismantling at the hands of the reds live on television tuesday and yesterday, and then today, though i was at work, we've had no customers in the coffee box, so i kept up with the whole sad affair on gameday.

is anyone else looking forward to 2008? or maybe 2009?

various complaints about good things, game 9 post

with the game on the radio over my shoulder and everyone out for a while, i have a moment of calm at the ridiculously tense office. note to job seekers: never work for a family owned company with fewer than 25 employees if you're not a member of the family.

since my last post, we've found our way back to .500, which is good, and without carp or any real help from albert, which is amazing. last night's game winner hit by a sub who should have been a scratch himself was pretty damned cool. i'm still not convinced that this team isn't still in a decline phase, but at least we can still beat up on the weaker members of the division.

i am amazed at how many commentators and "experts" think that the astros standa chance this year. adding carlos lee doesn't make up for losing clemens and pettite, and very few teams can ride to glory on the backs of wandy rodriguez and woody williams (as a 41 year old).

carp's elbow is a worry, but i'm of the school of thought that says better to lose him for part or even all of this season than have him be less effective in the remaining years of his contract. i was relatively impressed with kiesler last night, though i hope we don't ink him in at the cost of utilizing other important minor leaguers.

how long before we release hamlet (despite the occasional game winning two run double) and call up ankiel (with amaury marti/cazana taking his roster spot in aaa)? ankiel is tearing triple a up, amaury x is tearing the mexican league up, whereas preston is swinging for the fences every time and coming up short. like our other logjammed outfielders, ankiel is a left handed hitter, so he's more likely to replace skip schumacher.

as i type this, the pirates have a run in and the bases loaded, so i'd better stop posting. if i go on too long, i'm sure someone else important will end up on the dl.

looking forward

as a cardinal fan who fell in love with the team during the boom years (2001 to the present), i don't have a sense of perspective on an 0-3 start. thank god i have become a fan of baseball in the last two years. today, the warehouse manager and i went to nick's pub for lunch, and there was a kansas/kansas state game on. i watched it as though i were being offered a scouting position. the alternative was an ultimate fighting ripoff, so it's not like it was a hard decision, but still...

there is no curse.

all in all, i'm really looking forward to tonight's game. i want to see wainwright start, if only to see if that hammer curve flattens out after a few innings (please, god, no). i really hope we see a three hr game for the redbirds tonight, with none in the cheatboxes in left. god knows they need the morale boost. god knows cardinal nation does as well.

curse reversal?

i wondered aloud to mrs. rabid last night if there had been a reworking of the rabid redbird curse, i.e. that the cardinals would lose if i didn't post here. i promised to investigate, so here, for the sake of experiment, is the test post. if the cardinals win tonight, i will try to post at least a little before every game. if not, i will give up my silly superstitions.

on the whole, the cards haven't played such bad baseball these last two games, but they haven't been able to get all of the good baseball into one inning. last night, there were some timely hits that weren't followed up by timely hits. bloop, bloop is good when followed by blast, or even when followed by bloop, bloop, bloop, ad nauseam.

glavine and el duque are good pitchers, so it isn't the end of the world by any means. kip wells actually looked (to mike and john, sounded to me) pretty good last night, apart from the error. albert's double and rolen's homer were promising signs, but i get the feeling that team hasn't gelled yet. how many double plays can one hit into? one would hope we've knocked out a good portion of ours for april in these first two games.

there is no curse. last year, when rabid redbird began and the youngest member of the rabid family was born, we won the world series. remember that every day. remember catching siouxs! (mrs rabid) when she came running in from the kitchen between the final out being announced on the radio and actually seeing it on tv. remember the look on yadi's face, and remember that the guy who got that final out will see a lot more innings this year.

curses be damned

so, we backed into a championship. yesterday was kind of like being the runner up in an election, only to have the actual winner be exposed as a drug addict on election night, and thus you win by default.

thanks to anonymous, who (for the benefit of those who don't read the comments) wrote regarding my last post:

Did you seriously post this before another seven game losing streak?You should erase this blog for the good of your team and your city.It's funny.I like to read it.But start over.And burn some sage or something.

no, i think i posted it after the first game of the streak, to be honest, but in reality, i don't believe in such things. i haven't been posting much not because of the "curse" of rabid redbird, but rather because i haven't wanted to badmouth our team through some of the ugliest stretches of baseball i have ever had the displeasure to follow. in the last few weeks, i turned off more games than i care to admit.

regarding yesterday's start. why reyes? i would have just called it a bullpen start and sent narveson out there again against that lefty heavy lineup. then again, i'm not a major league manager, so, what happened happened. i do think that anthony may have pitched himself out of a playoff roster spot, and frankly, so much the better. i would rather him not get rocked by a superior team in the post-season, damaging his confidence or (far worse) his arm by trying to overthrow.

the three homers in the ninth tell me not to expect too much in the playoffs (not that i was, anyway). once the pressure was off, our guys found it in them to knock the shit out of the ball. up until that point, they had been shut down by a good, but not great pitcher, despite having several great talents in the lineup.

wait, that gives me an idea. perhaps if we can convince them that they've already clinched the world series due to someone else's accomplishment, we can have us a party...

damn the rabid redbird curse!

i know that i haven't been posting much to this blog these days, much to the disappointment of perhaps four people, but as i have stated in previous posts, every time i post something, the cardinals lose, usually miserably.

so i stopped.

however, i can little manage to stop talking baseball at work or at home, so i'll post here just to give my friends and family a break.

i really feel badly for izzy. i have stood by the claim that he's our best option at closer despite his struggles this year, and now we're going to have to go with our second best options. the guy is a total hoosier (in the st louis sense), but he's also totally class.

nice pair of wins over los gigantes. it's also great to see that scotty rolen has refound his stroke.

chris duncan... i'm still holding out judgement, but he just shouldn't be this good. i want him to continue, of course, but i still wonder how long before he falls back to earth. nonetheless, he hits the ball so freakin' hard...

glad to see that anthony reyes is starting tonight, but i do hope they're keeping him on a short leash in terms of pitch count. i very much want to see him doing good things in our rotation next year, and if that means he needs to be pulled in the fifth, so be it.

i'm looking forward to seeing eckstein back in the lineup, though i hope he found his bat while he's been healing. it's not that i hold the concussion against him, i just want what's best for the team. gollum has filled in admirably in eck's absence, so if the options are eck at fifty percent or gollum playing his best, i'd rather see gollum out there.

on the concussion front, it seems less and less likely that we're going to pick up jimmy's option. i'm not pleased by that at all. unless he just doesn't ever recover, he's the best defensive centerfielder in the league. he's better than average at the plate (at least this year; in years past, he's been a monster), and frankly, a good redbird. assuming he recovers his balance/vision/memory, i want to see him patrolling center for at least another year.

don speizio

i haven't been posting, because i am still wary of the apparent jinx that posts to this blog make for, but i can't help getting on to mention...

speiz! three homers, two days! way to be the dangerous switch hitting veteran!

that is all.

stop the jinx

it seems that every time i write a post, we end a streak. since our streak is at one for the time being, it's an off-day, and we're going off to face the hardest nl competition available on tuesday, i fugured i should post (going by the theory that if we do lose tomorrow, it will be due to other factors).

some thoughts:

anthony reyes demotion is probably purely a business thing, but it doesn't sit too well with cardinal nation. i for one am not confident that mulder is going to be any better than he was before the dl stint, and if we find ourselves unable to make moves without clearing waivers on possibly important (next year: ie weaver) pitchers, i will be pissed off. however, that said, reyes is the only starter we can safely send to the minors without waivers, so i'm sure that's the thinking. if mulder gets shelled on his return, i will be calling for his head.

fat sidney isn't a yankee anymore. turns out, sometimes, one man's trash is another man's litter.

baby dunc. i still don't believe it's the real deal, but he's damn sure trying to prove me wrong. in this past series, he even looked pretty good in left field.

gollum has played some pretty decent (though fairly routine) short, and after watching yesterday, i actually think he might have a better arm that eck; either that, or eck intentionally throws to the dirt in front of first. i hope that they give eck ample time to rest and recover, possibly even dl him so our bench isn't entirely made up of injured guys.

we've won three of our last four series. i can live with that. if we keep playing at that level, there's no telling. especially if glavine and pedro are injured for the rest of the year, we might even make it to the series, though i don't think it will be a fruitful one if we do.

t-shirt idea:
cuck the fubs
muck the fets
ass the fucktros