They’re not saying “Drewwww.” They’re saying “Boooo.”

Apparently, J.D. Drew hates Cardinals fans.

In a recent Associated Press story, Drew talks about how important it was for him to get off to a good start in Boston, a noted baseball town:

Drew said Boston’s passion for baseball seems similar to that in St. Louis, where he played six years. His early impression is that Boston fans won’t distribute cheers to the opposing team as liberally as they did in St. Louis.

“It was like, c’mon man, this is supposed to be the home-field advantage,” he said. “I think that what’s going to be the big difference here in Boston is that they’re pulling so hard for us that they don’t want the other team to succeed, and do well and make good plays.”

What a douchetard. But I guess it illustrates the difference between Boston fans and St. Louis fans; in St. Louis there’s a greater contingent of actual fans of baseball and rather than the drunken, mindless partisans, whose best taunts are along the lines of “Jeter has AIDS.”

Count me in among the former. Yes, I want the Cardinals to win, but I’ll always give it up for a hard but clean slide to break up a double play or an outfielder who hits his cut-off man. This is part of appreciating the little things of baseball, the beautiful minutiae.

I guess it would be hard for Drew to appreciate the small things while stuck on the disabled list all the time. I recall that he once pulled himself out of a game because he supposedly got hurt running up the dugout steps.

But he did fetch us the Wagonmaker, so I guess we can call it even.

Playoff beard, day 22

Wow… three full weeks. Never thought I’d have the playoff beard for this long. I haven’t even trimmed it, save for the shaving of the neck. I can’t abide the neckbeard. I figure that the Baseball Gods respect those who respect themselves. You can’t tell by the picture, but the beard is starting to get a tad unruly. My kids are starting to cringe whenever I kiss them.

So… had enough of the Kenny-Rogers-Is-A-Stupid-Ugly-Jerkface-Oh-And-He-Cheats-Too thing? I came across a KRIASUJOAHCT roundup of sorts on USAToday’s Sports Scope blog, yet another corner of Internet I was heretofore unaware of. I still have a lot to learn about this obsessive Internet nerd thing.

Anyway, a few items from said roundup caught my eye.

**Cardinals hitting coach Hal McRae says that not only was Rogers slathering the ball with brownish goo, he was scuffing them as well (hat tip to Mr. AOL):

We collected about five or six balls that are scuffed. He had to be using his fingernails or something.

If that’s the case, then why wasn’t that brought up later in the game. There’s still more to this story than is being let on, if that is possible.

**Christine Brennan looks at the players’ good cheating vs. bad cheating mores:

The bad cheating is known for its dark, secretive, backroom ways and … it involves pills or needles. … The good cheating is more nuanced. It’s the clever stuff, the wink-and-the-nod deception … it makes you wonder; sometimes, it even makes you laugh.

She makes a good point. Some of the gray-area stuff, such as stealing signs, I have no problem with. I just think doctoring the baseball sort of goes over the line, although I am ambivalent about that, too. Gaylord Perry is an admitted doctorer of baseballs, and he rode that reputation to 314 wins and the Hall of Fame. How many of those wins were of the ill-gotten variety? Yet I kinda think it’s cool that he got away with it so often, a nod to my deep-seated authority issues.

**The New York Times takes a look at relatively recent incidents of doctoring. I readily recall Joe Niekro’s from 1987. He was ordered to empty his pockets, and out fluttered an emery board. Awesome.

I guess it all comes down to the old adage: “It ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught.” And I suppose, deep down, I can’t disagree with that. But Rogers did get caught. And nothing was done about it, which is why I can’t seem to let this go.

And there’s also the “my team does it, your team does it, so just don’t make it obvious” thing. Rogers’ cheating was as blatant as anything I’d ever witnessed. At least Niekro put his works in his pocket. Because it was so blatant, does that mean the gentlemen’s agreement is now off?

If the World Series goes to Game 6, I hope Tony La Russa gets so far up Rogers’ ass that he asks the umps to check him at the start of every inning and after every ball in the dirt. You know Fox will employ its patented Super Mega Unnecessary Zoom™ after the first one he bounces.

Anyway, the Series must go on. I can’t seem to not live in the past, so check CardNilly for a Game 3 preview.

Go Cards! Go beards!

A show of hands

Who among the brilliant readers of this Web log actually had hope that Mark Mulder wouldn’t piss Wednesday’s start down his leg?

*crickets chirp … a coyote howls in the distance*

Hmmm… just as I suspected. For the record, Mulder’s first start since his shoulder woes was as such:

3+ innings, 9 runs, 9 hits, 4 walks, 1 K

That’s actually worse than what I was expecting. The $1.98 question is: On whom do we pin blame? Do we blame Mulder for sucking, or do we blame his coaches for tossing him out there, knowing he was going to get more lit up than Haley Joel Osment?

Personally, I choose the latter (the coaches, not the kid who got busted for a DUI and weed). It was obvious to anyone who could see a TV that Mulder is broken. At work last night, I walked to the back of my office, where the game was on, and I saw it was 4-0 with one out in the first inning. “(Expletive)ing Mulder,” I said.

His mechanics are completely trashed. The first pitch I saw was to Lastings Milledge in the first inning, and he has an awful hitch in his delivery. As his body comes forward, his arm stops for a split-second before he finishes the pitch. At least he looked angry as he was getting smacked around like he stole something.

If a schmendrick like me can notice a hitch in Mulder’s mechanics, it’s just blatant mismanagement on the part of Waltony LaDuncan to give him a start. It’s as if they just threw their hands in the air (obviously like they just don’t care) and conceded this series.

But there is hope on the horizon. Jason Marquis (a native of Shaolin) takes the bump tonight in Queens. What? He stinks, too?

Crap.

Huffing and weaving

The Astros have taken a step to improve their sagging offense by acquiring Aubrey Huff from the Devil Rays in exchange for a couple of minor-leaguers.

My first thought was that the Huff trade was the Astros’ equivalent to the Cardinals acquiring Jeff Weaver, sort of a small cork to try to plug a raging leak in the hull.

But in checking for reactions around the Cardinals’ blogosphere, I saw that Pip over at Fungoes had come up with some numbers that might make Cardinals fans worry just a bit:

Huff is a notorious slow starter, and, true to form, he’s started heating up just in time for his moving van to bring him to Minute Maid Park.

Pip finds Huff’s career monthly OPS splits begin at .712 in April and rise to .905 in August before dipping to .819 in September. That should make for an interesting playoff run this season if he holds true to form.

Speaking of this season, how have his monthly OPS splits been in 2006? Frig if I know, dude. Let’s look it up:

April: .652
May: .531
June: .943
July: 1.183

Damn. Talk about selling high. As I type this, I hear Buster Olney on “SportsCenter” say that Huff has been hitting .374 since May 31. Word.

Going back to my analogy with Jeff Weaver, what are his career monthly ERA/WHIP/BAA splits like? Let’s take a look:

April: 5.04/1.43/.293
May: 3.83/1.26/.252
June: 4.53/1.33/.270
July: 4.95/1,36/.272
Aug: 4.53/1.27/.272
Sept: 4.50/1.31/.277

Those career numbers don’t exactly inspire confidence. His 2006 numbers are more frightening: April, 7.48/1.59/.316; May, 5.97/1.44/.297; June, 5.47/1.56/.316. Can I get a yikes? In his defense, Weaves has shown something of a pulse recently: His K/BB ratio in 26.1 June innings is 25/5.

So even though the deals are the proverbial apple and orange, I’d say the Astros made the higher-impact move of pawns around the great N.L. Central chessboard.

Muy positivo

I enjoyed Tuesday’s game a great deal, not just because it was a win, and not just for the witty repartee in VEB’s Game 20 thread. I also found it fun in that a few players made more or less important strides in this young season. I’m talking about:

Jeff Suppan: Soup has had a couple of rocky starts this season, and his last one was particularly bad. I thought that Tuesday’s third inning was more of the same. Those three runs, however, all were unearned, the result of an apparently questionable interference call on Gary “Paquette” Bennett. Suppan did a nice job minimizing the damage, with the runs scoring on a pair of singles.

Hector Luna: Hector’s two-hit night Monday bought him another start at 2B, this time against a right-hander, against whom Hector has a somewhat unfavorable split. Against that right-hander, though, Hector rapped three singles. He also stole a base and would have had another one had he not slid into the path of the off-target throw from the catcher. He obviously has a ways to go before he’s a complete player, but I think he’s wrested the starting 2B job away from Aaron Miles and the other guy.

Juan Encarnacion: Whoa, daddy! Did Instant Breakfast ever bust out in a big way. After totaling 15 bases and 1 RBI in his first 19 games, Juan erupts for 9 total bases and 4 RBI in Tuesday’s tilt. He also made a stellar tumbling catch in right and a nice running catch in foul ground. He played as if he were a man possessed, determined to get off his schneid and to get the boo-buzzards off his back. It was nice that the fans gave him the curtain call; I’m sure he appreciated it. Maybe this is all he’ll need to finally relax and start producing a little bit more consistently.

I better go to bed early tonight

Cardinals tickets go on sale by the single game Saturday at 9 a.m. According to the Post-Dispatch, the 400K or so tickets left are expected to sell out that day.

I better check the sked to see when I might be able to go. Hopefully, there’s some ducats left by about 10. Otherwise, I’ll have to rely on fellow bloggers to tell me what the park is like.

And how convenient that there’s a built-in scarcity during the first half of the season:

About 6,000 of the new stadium’s seats won’t even be bolted in for the home opener April 10. The team doesn’t expect to have a full house of seats until after the All-Star break.

This, even though team officials claim the park is way ahead of schedule. Conspiracy theorists might believe that those seats are being held back on purpose, to drive up demand and send fans to the team’s scalping sites, a la the Tribune Co.

Maybe I can weasel some seats out of one of the bigwigs at work. Speaking of work, Hal Pilger, The State Journal-Register’s Cardinals writer, writes about how Larry Bigbie would like to forget about 2005. Tony La Russa also seems to like having a DH during camp.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!