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It's Friday in the Gateway City, and you all know what that means. It's time again for our Baseball Card of the Week here at the Rundown.

In honor of Kyle Lohse becoming the Cardinals' first twelve-game winner of the year last night, I'm bringing you a card from my own personal collection.

I'm not taking any responsibility for this post (hell, I'm not even going to edit out the grammatical errors), but this e-mail has caught on like wildfire today.

BRUSSELS -- Anheuser-Busch has accepted a $52 billion takeover bid from Belgium-based InBev NV to create the world's largest beer maker and end a month-long standoff. While pitching the deal in recent weeks, InBev chief executive Carlos Brito has said that he is "committed to the city of St. Louis" and that changes here would be minimal. One that Brito said will show up shortly after this weeks Major League Baseball All-Star event in New York will be a minor one in the long standing uniforms worn by the St. Louis Cardinal Baseball team. First-baseman Albert Pujols, one of the first to try the new outfits said "while it may take a little time for Cardinal fans to fall in line behind the change, I personally like them a lot. They'll really be enjoyable during those hot, muggy days in late July and August. I expect all of the fans will be wearing them before the end of the season!" Sporting goods stores around the St. Louis area report brisk sales of the new Cardinal memorabilia.

(photo after the jump)

By AARON SCHAFER (e-mail)

Here at The Rundown, we pay a lot of attention to the action on the field. It is kind of our job, after all. But what happens on the field is only part of the story.

It's been a busy year for the St. Louis Cardinals, and only a fraction of the action has occurred between the lines. So let's take a look at the year so far and see just what we may have all missed while we were watching the games, shall we?

Team RFT had a sniff of its old self last night. It smelled a lot like marijuana. Sticky, gooey, chronic marijuana.

Then again, perhaps that odor was just the fumes wafting over from the Macanudo-size blunt being passed around in the nearby parking lot. Whatever the case, the secondhand smoke seemed only to stoke RFT's lethargy Monday night and produce more than a few flashbacks to seasons when the team routinely suffered defeats by double-digit margins.

From the onset yesterday, it was clear that this was not the same club that just two weeks ago rallied for its greatest victory of the season. Hitless in the top of the first, RFT took the field only to watch Chevys Fresh Mex bat its way through the order on the way a quick eight runs. Chevys added to its tally in nearly every ensuing inning and led 22-3 going into the final frame.

While Chevys' bats were finding a Jarlsberg wheel's worth of holes between RFT fielders, it was all RFT could do to not hit the ball directly into the gloves of its opponents. Chevys' man-mountain of a pitcher recorded so many 1-3 putouts that several RFT players questioned whether his girth wasn't exterting some type of gravitational pull on the ball.

As he does so often, Tom "Sox" Kavanaugh scored the first runs for the good guys, with a three-run blast over the fence in center field. Chris Schaeffer proved once again that the proper mixture of human-growth hormone and Busch beer can work wonders; the outfielder had another big day, going three-for-three at the plate and ably scooping up two flyouts to right-center.

Plays of the day, though, have to go to Ray "Ray" Richardson and Cathleen "Coach Cat" Joffray, who hit back-to-back, inside-the-infield home runs in the seventh.

Those "hits" brought the final score to 22-5 and left RFT with a 3-4 record on the season.

The team can only hope that next week's party in the parking lot will feature a more stimulating intoxicant -- say crack or meth. This team could use the pick-me-up.

-Unreal

Yesterday, I took a look at some of the biggest positives from the first half of the season.

And really, it's been mostly positive so far. A team that no one really gave any chance of competing has reached the All-Star break in second place in the division, and is leading the wild card race. All good stuff, right? What more could you possibly ask for? Hell, this season has been such a pleasant surprise that I even decided to go with an extra positive, just to reflect how optimistic I find myself feeling toward this year's team.

Well, now comes the bad news. And there is always bad news. In no particular order, here we go:

This past weekend saw the passing of (at least) two former major leaguers: Cardinals backup catcher Dave Ricketts died days after his 73rd birthday, and Yankees third sacker Bobby Murcer died at age 62. Both are remembered as uncommonly classy men.

I have only the vaguest recollection of seeing Murcer play, and none whatsoever of Ricketts. Though I grew up in St. Louis, my baseball game-going career didn't heat up at all till the mid-1970s.

Derrick Goold's sweet piece about Ricketts in this morning's St. Louis Post-Dispatch told me more about Ricketts than I'd known, through the prism of the current and former players who benefited from his teaching:

Some called him Dave, most called him Mr. Ricketts, and Yadier Molina, sitting at his locker after the Cardinals' victory Sunday, said he "was like my dad."

"I'm here because of him," Molina said. "He made me into a catcher. I wasn't a catcher when I got here. I learned a lot from him. He was like my dad, there for me since I was 17. He meant so much to me."

[...]"I've never seen a coach who has worked harder for whatever team he's involved with than Dave Ricketts. Ever," [former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Steve] Blass said. "Totally dedicated. ... He had a zest for life that was part of his personal life, and, thank goodness, we are better because it spilled over into his professional life.

"He was a bright light in our game."

Over the weekend, Dave Ricketts, a longtime coach in the St. Louis Cardinals' organization, passed away at the age of 73.

Mr. Ricketts was one of the most respected men in the game of baseball, both as a former big league catcher who played on the 1967 Championship squad for the Redbirds, and then later as a coach who helped to bring numerous other catchers through the minor leagues for the Pirates and the Cardinals. He taught generations of players to play the game the way it was supposed to be played, and he will be sorely missed by those around the game.

We here at the Riverfront Times would like to take this opportunity to offer our condolences to the Ricketts family, and to the Cardinal family.

- Aaron Schafer

Ah, the All-Star break. That special time of the year when we all huddle up together around the television with a big bowl of popcorn and listen to Chris Berman make an ass of himself calling the Home Run Derby and then watch one of the biggest farces in all of sports. That's right, everybody! We thought of the best way to determine who gets home field advantage in our sports' championship series! Nope, not the best record. Not even close! We're going to use the outcome of an exhibition game! I know, why didn't we think of this years ago? Oh, and on top of that, we're still going to require that every team be represented, and we're still going to let the fans decide who plays in this utterly meaningless yet somehow ridiculously important game!

You know, so far this season, the new Cardinals GM has led a pretty charmed life.

True, John Mozeliak did inherit a mess of a front office at the beginning of his tenure. He did some nice work with that situation, moving quickly to restore harmony and begin healing the rifts between various factions in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. So there is that. He did a nice job of trying to add some stability to the team's roster, and I said as much over at Viva El Birdos quite a while back.

But when it comes right down to it, he hasn't really had his feet held to the fire just yet.

Hey kids, it's time again for a new edition of the Baseball Card of the Week!

Today's Card of the Week comes to us from Alan West (no offense, Alan, but it would be much cooler if your first name were Adam), of St. Ann, Missouri.

It's a 2004 Bowman Chrome Albert Pujols card. I have to say, I've never seen a card from this particular series, and it's in beautiful condition to boot. Thanks to Alan for the submission.

Of course, we all know what Albert has been doing, both in the years previous to this card and the years since. Thus, I don't feel it necessary to go into a big recap of Albert's career. Just enjoy, folks.

As always, any submissions you have should be sent to me at asaeschafer@gmail.com. Thanks.

- Aaron Schafer

Well, it certainly did shoot the idea of a prediction contest all to hell and back, didn't it?

Who had a third of an inning, with no runs? No one? Really? Didn't see that one coming?

Seriously, though, that's obviously the sort of line that no one could have really predicted. However, I am a man of my word, and I promised a winner, damnit. So, E.J. Miller, by dint of his predicting closest to the correct number of innings, is the winner of the Mark Mulder Watch Contest. Congratulations, E.J. I'll be in touch soon to hammer out the details. Thanks to all who participated.

I wasn't expecting anything great out of Mulder. In fact, a couple of days ago, I was discussing the prospects for his return with a friend of mine, and I said that I thought he was done. I said he would probably never contribute anything positive to the Cardinals, this season or any other.

Still, I'm more than a little bit heartbroken this morning.

Well, the Cardinals did what I had no faith they could do last night. They beat Cole Hamels, one of the most talented young pitchers in the game, with Joel Pineiro on the mound in the Phillies' park.

Pineiro was masterful, riding a sharp sinker and tight slider to a shutout performance. The few times he found himself in a jam, Joel made the pitch he needed to and got the double play in a couple of key situations. He didn't rack up the strikeouts the way that Hamels did, but at the end of the night, Pineiro's name had a W next to it, and that's all that mattered.

As good a game as we saw last night, though, it was only a warmup.

Tonight, we see the main event. Of course, just what kind of event it's going to end up being is anybody's guess, but I think it's pretty safe to say that it will be an event either way.

Mark Mulder will take the mound tonight and make his first start of the year.

Thanks to our sources at ESPN -- OK, we don't have sources, more like a leak -- you can now pronounce the names of Major League Baseball players just like Joe Morgan and John Miller try to do, between Morgan's long, often incorrect anecdotes about Morgan's playing days.

Example: Albert PUJOLS (POO-holes)

The list is quite long, so it's going to appear after the jump. To search for a single player's name, hold down the Ctrl (or the Apple button, Mac users) button and hit F.

2008 MLB PRONUNCIATION GUIDE:

Well, the big news of the last couple of days, of course, is the deal the Brewers and Indians put together to make CC Sabathia a member of the Milwaukee club. And I'll bet a lot of you are asking yourselves, I wonder what Aaron thinks about the trade?

You're not asking yourself that? Oh. Um, well, huh. Okay. You want to talk about something else then?

Um, did you guys see that they just put out another Incredible Hulk movie? That seems really weird to me. Didn't they just make a new one of those about a year or two ago?

Hey, wait a second. This is a baseball blog. If you didn't care what I thought about the Sabathia deal, you probably wouldn't be reading this column in the first place, would you?

Oh. You just come for the sparkling wit and frequent grammar mistakes? Hmm. I'm not really sure how to respond to that. Well, anyhow, I'm going to talk about the CC Sabathia deal anyway, and don't try to stop me.

I'm a huge proponent of teams building from within. You've probably noticed this fact, due in large part to my constant ranting about not wanting the Cardinals to mortgage the future for a marginal current upgrade, and so on and so on. You know the drill -- I won't bore you with further diatribes. Suffice it to say that if the Cardinals were to make this same deal, with comparable players from their farm system, I would be down at Busch Stadium getting myself arrested for protesting without either a license or clothing.

My father and I don't talk about baseball a whole lot, largely because we almost always end up in an argument.

Most of his opinions tend to fall along the lines of your typical Kevin Slaten listener (or ex-listener now, I suppose), and while I may not be the sunniest, most optimistic guy, the constant litany of ''cheap ownership-dumb manager-cheap ownership-overpaid players-cheap ownership-lazy players-cheap ownership'' begins to grate on my nerves after a while.

Case in point: All season long, my dad has done nothing but tell me that the Cards are going to fall apart, that it's coming any day now. He's managed to ignore every victory, every win the team has managed to pull out, every exceptional performance we've seen along the way. Maybe you have a friend who does the same. It's really a little amazing, to be perfectly honest. After a while, you have to just step back a bit and admire the guy's persistence in the face of a reality that seems hell bent on proving him wrong.