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The San Diego Padres have released struggling center fielder Jim Edmonds.

The 37-year-old former Cardinal was struggling at the plate, hitting just .174 for a Pads ballclub that's batting an aggregate .232 as a team and languishing in last place in the NL West.

Dude looked good in the Birds on the Bat, though.

And didn't he ramble!

-Tom Finkel

Dontcha love the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Web site redesign? Brand-new, clean backgrounds. Brand-new, big typefaces.

Same old lame headlines, though.

Like Unreal's dear, departed mother used to say: What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts.

Speaking of mothers and headlines, here's another from today's Post:

Kinda a downer, to Unreal's eye, especially given the nature of the holiday. Why not accentuate the positive? Like:

Or perhaps:

-Unreal

Yesterday afternoon, right about 3 p.m. St. Louis time, a tremendous explosion was heard in downtown Denver, Colorado. Local officials, fearing the worst, visions of a terrorist attack in their heads, responded to the apparent source of the sound, Coors Field. Upon reaching the stadium, they were shocked to find a smoking, dust-filled crater where the pitcher's mound had previously stood. On further inspection, they found a single Cardinal player at the bottom of the new depression, one Kyle Lohse.

That's right, folks. Yesterday we saw Kyle Lohse come crashing down to Earth.

He had been roughed up in his previous outing, against the Cubs, but it was brushed aside as one bad day, particularly since the Cardinals were able to maintain and emerge victorious. This time, though, not so much.

I had actually had plans of writing up a post-game article yesterday, but found myself without a single idea of anything I could actually write about. It was an ugly game, and there aren't really even any positives to take from it, except for the fact that Ryan Ludwick may, in fact, destroy us all with his insane powers.

So, I didn't write a post-gamer. Then, I turn on the television this morning, and I see that, apparently, no one else could find anything interesting either, because all of the coverage is of Albert Pujols getting pissed and mouthing off to Tony La Russa when Tony pulled him from the game.

Not totally satisfied with your weekend itinerary? Never fear, Go! is here! This regular feature highlights everything from rock shows to art openings, from delicious dishes to hidden-gem hangouts. Here's the weekend concert calendar compiled in A to Z

Friday, 5/9

Clothing Time: High fashion is as fickle as most world-hating teens -- its moods and styles are mercurial in form, switching fabrics, cuts and even era-inspired styles several times a year. This is why your inner fashionista simply must sashay to the third annual Pronto Fashion Show and Design Contest and learn about what’s hot at this very moment. The doors at 555 Washington Avenue open at 7:30 p.m. with a runway show at 8:30 displaying the latest work from up-and-coming designers. The competition portion is to be judged by industry experts and fashion retailers. Before the show, enjoy a complimentary wine bar and appetizers from Hendris. Tickets ($40, $125 for VIP seating) can be picked up at HT Communications Group (141 N. Meramec Avenue; 314-726-3117).

In the world of biological impossibility, Harry S. Truman would be 124 years old today. He was also the first -- and remains the only -- president from the great state of Missouri. In celebration, some government offices, like the DMV, have shut down for the day.

It's true that Truman belongs more to the western half of the state -- he spent most of his life in and around Independence -- and if St. Louis were claiming a hometown president by proximity, we might do better to go with Abraham Lincoln; Springfield, Illinois is only 90 miles from here as the crow flies. But that Mississippi River makes all the difference. (Truman, incidentally, was the second president born west of the big river, and given that Herbert Hoover was the first, he's the first worth mentioning.)

Besides, Harry Truman was pretty damn cool.

I was listening to Kevin Wheeler on KMOX last night on the drive home and caught his conversation with first-year Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak. After some chitchat about the team's early-season run of great play -- and great plays, like Pujols' Monday-night mad dash and Ankiel's phenomenal-cannon heroics on Tuesday -- Wheeler asked Mozeliak to comment on the latest news about Mark Mulder, the oft-injured lefty whose recovery from recent shoulder surgery took a detour yesterday after he was examined by team doctor George Paletta.

I wasn't recording or taking notes -- I was driving -- so I didn't get it down verbatim, but the gist of Mozeliak's response was this: The decision to sideline Mulder for at least a week owing to what was described as a mild strain of the rotator cuff was the right thing to do for the team and, Mozeliak stressed several times, for Mulder.

So far this year, we've seen the Cardinals win games in a lot of different ways. We've seen great starting performances carry the day, despite little offense. We've seen mediocre starting performances get bailed out by solid offensive contributions. We've even seen games in which the bullpen, coming into the game much earlier than you would hope, has held the opponent's offense down, while the Cards' bats creep slowly back into it.

On the other hand, we've really only seen one type of loss. It's a pretty recognizable -- and frustrating -- pattern.

Often when the Cardinals lose, it goes occurs like this:

The dead, as far as I'm aware of, have not risen from their graves and begun to feast upon the living, but if they ever did, the Zombie Squad would make sure you were prepared for the undead cataclysm. That, you see, is their mission:

It has been a wild few days for freelance photographer Nichole Torpea. The 22-year-old UMSL grad was shooting the My Chemical Romance concert at the Pageant for Riverfront Times this past Saturday night when, she says, she was assaulted by a member of the band's security team.

But she'll be shooting an MCR concert again this Friday at New York City's Madison Square Garden -- as a special guest of the band.

While taking pictures from the balcony of the Pageant during last Saturday's sold-out show, Torpea says, she was approached by a man she believes is a member of MCR's security team. The man, whom she later described to St. Louis police as six-foot-three, 210 to 230 pounds and dressed all in black, grabbed her arm, led her through a door to a stairwell and forced her to the ground. Torpea says the man paid little attention to the photo pass attached to her shirt.

"I was collapsing under his pressure," she says. "I had no idea what was going on. He had no ID and wouldn't tell me who he was. He kept saying, 'You know what you did. Give me the fucking camera.'"

Remember yesterday, when I said we may have seen the best play of our lifetimes? Well, it turns out I was wrong, and it only took one night for me to be proven so. Last night we saw not just one of the greatest throws I've ever witnessed, but two of them, both made by the same man.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Rick Ankiel. The Natural.

But more on that later. I come to you today with a much more pressing issue, one that I believe will prove to be the defining moment of our time. And how we deal with it will, in large part, determine how future generations view us and our legacy.

I speak, of course, of Dinger.

Oh, what ill-formed notion first spawned such an abomination? What impulse gave rise to this hideous affront to nature and man? The name itself calls forth images of crying children, dead batteries, war orphans and losing lottery tickets.

Dinger.

Who, you ask, is Dinger? Only the most foul, loathsome creation of the mascot world. Only the harbinger of black days for us all, a purple Star Wormwood hanging in the sky above Coors Field.

While the hometown heroes the St. Louis Cardinals opened their 162-game season weeks ago, last night a slightly lesser-known local squad took the field for the first time all year. And to Unreal, "local" means that the players sit in adjacent cubicles. That's right, yesterday was opening day for the RFT's slow-pitch softball team.

But while the Redbirds were able to dispatch the defending National League champs last night thanks to some heads-up hustle from their MVP slugger, the RFTers were not so fortunate, falling to U. City rec league titans BS Bar by a score that was tallied at "At least 16-0." The box score reveals the impressive magnitude of the defeat, as BS Bar led in such categories as home runs, hits, fielding percentage, total bases, and, perhaps most frustrating for the alt-weekly lineup fresh off a Cinco de Drinko bender, alcohol consumed. After watching the game, a representative from Chico's Bail Bonds immediately offered to sponsor the RFT squad.

The award for player of the game goes to staff writer/pitcher Chad Garrison, who, flush with confidence after conquering the St. Louis real estate market, struck out three while walking just one in four innings of work. While his ERA is inflated after allowing sixteen runs, including an emblematic home run on the first pitch of the season, the blogosphere is already touting his low WHIP and xFIP numbers as more telling of his abilities. If you're in a deep fantasy league, he could be a good waiver pickup.

Check back every Tuesday this summer to see if the RFT will be able to improve on its opening-day showing. Next week's goal: advancing a runner past first base.

-Unreal

We may have seen the single greatest play of any of our lifetimes last night. I don't know about all of you, but that's definitely the first time I've ever seen a run score from second base on a ground out to the second baseman. (See video here.) Also, I don't really expect to see it again. Ever.

But enough about that. We'll see plenty of that; every news station in town, and maybe even some of the national people, will be running the replay of that one ad nauseam for quite a while. Lost in all of the late-game running heroics by Albert the Great was the debut of a young right-hander for the Cardinals by the name of Mike Parisi.

Welcome to town, Mike. And while I'm at it, nice job last night. So where, exactly, did Mr. Parisi come from, and what should we fans expect from him?

In a wide-ranging and pretty interesting interview at The Big Lead, Buzz Bissinger, author of Tony La Russa hagiography 3 Nights in August, mans up and apologizes for going off on Deadspin.com founder (and St. Louis homeboy) Will Leitch.

Bissinger's tirade unfolded last week during a segment of Bob Costas' HBO show Costas Now, when a panel (Bissinger, Leitch, Costas and Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards) discussed "Internet Media."

Bissinger had interrupted Leitch as he was responding to Costas' initial question, asserting that the Deadspin-ner is "really full of shit." Here's a link to the fracas (more after the jump):

Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, and our freelance videographer Anastasia Folorunso hit the street to speak with flesh-and-blood superhero (impersonators) who had also managed to foil a would-be thief at Star Clipper.

For the kid in all of us, read about the event and watch the video after the jump.

On Friday, I said this was the series that would really start to give us an idea about exactly who and what the Cardinals really are this year.

So, what did we learn?