Blogs

Is there such thing as a "virtual wake"?

After the highway accident that killed St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher Josh Hancock early yesterday morning, Larry Borowsky's Cardinals blog vivaelbirdos.com hosted what could only be described as a wake.

Read Larry's riff on the "meaninglessness" of sports and fandom here.

Then jump back to the comments thread that accompanied yesterday's entry to see how hardcore Cards fans -- these are folks all over the world, many of whom "watch" the Redbirds via mlb.com's "Gameday" and, simultaneously, exchange running commentaries on the game -- shared their grief, amid visits from fans from rival teams, virtually all of whom showed remarkable class.

You can view yesterday's Cardinals' press conference here. And of course, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers umpteen points of view and forums for feedback. An example of the former is Bernie Miklasz' column today. For the latter you need look no further than the opening salvo on the Talk of the Day forum.

-Tom Finkel

Gerry Fraley had a pretty good (if predictable) story in yesterday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the prevalence of so-called smokeless tobacco among major leaguers. I say predictable because the story was undoubtedly inspired by St. Louis Cardinals phenom Chris Duncan, whose prodigious output at the plate is rivaled only by the prodigious wad that's always present between, as the dippers used to say, his cheek and gum.

Fraley devotes a portion of the story to Major League Baseball's official stance on Skoal, Red Man and the like:

MLB would like to rid the game of tobacco's stain.

Clubs cannot provide tobacco to players, a radical change from the days when clubhouses brimmed with cartons of cigarettes, pouches of tobacco and tins of snuff.

In 1993, MLB banned the use of tobacco by all minor-leaguers not on 40-man major-league rosters and therefore not represented by the Major League Baseball Players Association. MLB hoped the bottom-up approach would wean players from tobacco before they reached the majors.

With that in mind, here's an interesting image from across the pond:

While making note of the MLB logo's proximity to the can o' snuff, don't fail to notice the small print:

Not to cast any aspersions at Covee, which, by all appearances, is one kickass Dutch sporting-goods store -- and a company that promptly got back to me when I asked them about the trade in American snuff and their association with MLB.

"We have been in business for over 30 years," Covee's Edwin Corpeleijn writes via e-mail. "We know several people within the MLB organization. They know we have the logo on the site.... I was told, that as long as we keep the colors the same, it is no problem."

As for the market for Copenhagen in the Netherlands, writes Corpeleijn: "Some players like to have the chewing tobacco, so we buy it. I have never tried it and I will never try it, but since it is not prohibited here, we just sell it to satisfy the customer's needs. We have the pay 275% tobacco tax on these items, but players here do not seem to mind."

-Tom Finkel

Anthony La Russa Jr. has managed 4,306 games in his MLB career as of April 25, 2007. He’s cultivated a reputation as a cerebral manager in that time. It’s his stoic demeanor, his shades (worn even during night games), the methodical way he works a game. La Russa’s apparent low-key nature has kept many an old-school baseball fan from embracing the professorial skipper. He’s too nuts and bolts, not enough blood and guts. Look at how he let Kenny “Sticky Fingers” Rogers slide in last season’s World Series — would Earl Weaver have taken that sort of shit with nary a peep?

Lou Piniella has managed 2,960 games in his career. Piniella’s reputation is that of a powder keg; The man known as “Sweet Lou” is famous for his spit-flecked tirades, base throwing and the air-curdling vitriol of his swearing. An angry Piniella is a sight to behold. In fact, and we’re not ashamed to admit it, just the possibility of witnessing Piniella’s incandescent rage makes a little pee trickle down our leg every time he stands up suddenly in the dugout.

And yet, La Russa has been thrown out of more games than Piniella, according to the statistics in the just-released The SABR Baseball List & Record Book. See?

1. Bobby Cox - 123 ejections
2. John McGraw - 117 ejections
3. Earl Weaver - 97 ejections
4. Leo Durocher - 95 ejections
5. Frankie Frisch - 82 ejections
6. Paul Richards - 80 ejections
7. Tony La Russa - 73 ejections
8. Clark Griffith - 62 ejections
9. Joe Torre - 58 ejections
10. Lou Piniella - 57 ejections

armchairgm.com asks: "Mac or Bonds: Who Roided It Up Better?" -- and evaluates the pair via their baseball cards.

-Unreal

After a disappointing second-place finish on a sloppy track on March 31, Unreal's (vicariously, anyhow) Thoroughbred, River Front Times, won a six-furlong race in the slop at Fairmount Park this past Saturday night under jockey Camilo Pitty.

Unreal, who'd cheered on RFT to his maiden win at Fairmount back on March 6, was not on hand for our pony's second score, because it was raining like hell and cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

Too damn bad, as RFT, owned by top Fairmount owner Lou O'Brien and trained by top Fairmount trainer Ralph Martinez, went off at odds of 5-2 and returned $7.20 on a $2 wager.

Son of a bitch.

According to the Equibase Company's official chart of the race, "RIVER FRONT TIMES away somewhat slowly, was rated from inside, roused along the rail on the turn, steadily progressed under a drive and got the advantage in the waning yards."

The time of the race, a $3,200 claiming event for non-winners of two races, was 1:13.80. Jonesin' Rage, trained by legendary Fairmount Park jockey Dave Gall, finished second to complete a $35 exacta that Unreal surely would have bet if we'd been there instead of home, drinking too much.

In case you've been sleeping under a rock, River Front Times came into being two years ago, when Unreal, as part of our very complex investment strategy, asked O'Brien, the protagonist of this 2003 feature story by then-staff writer Mike Seely, how much he'd charge us to rename a horse after our source of income. The owner initially quoted us a price of $1 million but settled for $100, the fee the Jockey Club charges to process a name-change. That's how a two-year-old colt he'd recently purchased named Pollys Jaybird became River Front Times.

Now that RFT has won at this level, he'll face tougher company next time out. We'll update this post as soon as we hook up with O'Brien.

[Update 4-19-07 1:45 p.m.] Lou O'Brien says he's very pleased with RFT's progress. "He's sound, very healthy," says the owner. "His problem has always been that he's a big play-baby. He's starting to grow up a little bit. He was very green. He's showing some maturity now: knuckling down, paying attention."

And what's next for River Front Times? "Probably raise the [claiming] price, up to four or five thousand. The main thing is we've got him going in the right direction. We don't want to overwhelm him competitively. We have a plan for every horse. As their performance level increases, we move them up. We'll see how he progresses."

Depending on how the horse does, O'Brien might ultimately opt to ship him to Hoosier Park, outside Indianapolis. "We'll see. I don't know if I'm gonna run him here or if I'm going to take him to Indiana," he says. "We've got to run him where we can make the most money." Whatever the case, O'Brien says we can expect to see RFT at Fairmount "at least until this screwball meet's over."

-Unreal

Brian Sumers had a good story in the Post yesterday about the fate of an unknown number of St. Louis Public Schools students who decide to transfer to county schools this August. Because the city district lost its state accreditation, SLPS kids have the right to enroll in any county schools that agree to accept them as tuition students. As Sumers' story points out, students will be allowed to play varsity sports right out of the gate.

Under Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA) bylaws, transfer students must sit out 365 days of a sport in which they held a spot on a roster at their previous school -- unless their situation falls under one of nine exceptions, including "transfer from unaccredited public school."

Athletics can't motivate the school switch, though. So Coach X from the county can't entice Star Quarterback Y from a city school to enroll at the suburban school. And the student athletes can't transfer specifically for the opportunity to suit up for a county outfit, whether a coach approached them or not. In those cases, theoretically, the kids would lose eligibility.

Although the Post reports that MSHSAA intends to "police" the situation, MSHSAA spokesman Rick Kindhart says the agency hasn't unveiled any new means to do so. In effect, then, the same procedures will hold: The principal of the sending SLPS school must sign off on a transfer form either endorsing or questioning the student's move. If the principal were to allege an athletics-motivated transfer, MSHSAA would step in to investigate.

Kindhart does not anticipate an exodus "of epic proportions" and an accompanying heap of transfer applications on the doorstep of MSHSAA's Columbia headquarters. That hasn't happened in other unaccredited districts, Kindhart points out.

MSHSAA receives 1,600 to 1,800 transfer applications a year, according to the Post story, and investigates in about 20 cases.

That's news.

Really, it is.

Last year, in the process of putting together our "Basketball By the Book" series, we tried for months to get these numbers from MSHSAA, only to be told -- repeatedly -- that such stats were impossible to calculate.

Kindhart now says that thanks to technological changes in the past year, a lot more information is available.

-Kristen Hinman

I don't miss the inane chatter of the Mad Hungarian, but I do miss me some Cardinals baseball. Thankfully, two months after moving to New York and two weeks into the season, I discovered a Cardinals bar, Dewey's Flatiron, located on Fifth Avenue across from Madison Square Park.

Only a half-hour subway ride from my pad in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Dewey's is perhaps more upscale than my previous Cardinals game haunt, the grease-saturated CWE dive J&A's Bar and Grill. It features good burgers and overpriced drinks. (As is typical in New York, the drinks cost about the same as the burgers.) No one I've asked seems to know how Dewey's became a Cardinals bar. Perhaps the owners saw a niche. (I've also found Brewers and Cubs bars here.)

I chatted with a pair of SLU High grads who were as amazed as I was to find ourselves lusting after Imo's pizza when their ads came on. Cardinals fan Will Leitch of Deadspin was also present. I didn't berate the Illinois native for dragging St. Albert's name through the mud on his Gawker Media-owned blog last year, if only because he was surrounded by a swarm of red-clad screaming girls.

They were yelping largely for Chris Duncan, the hero of the night (inasmuch as there can be a hero in a loss to the Pirates). There was no denying that Dunc's diving catch of Freddy Sanchez's liner to left was a near miracle. Graceful, it was not, however, and even less so was the way he adjusted his chaw for what seemed like the next five minutes, pausing to wipe brown slobber onto his uniform.

I wonder what he'll hump next.

-Ben Westhoff

-Unreal

Cardinals homers: The end is near.

It's a week into the baseball season and already folks are making World Series predictions, with the New York Yankees and Mets enjoying the best odds (4/1 and 11/2, respectively) to play into late October. The Cardinals, for the record, are at 14/1 to repeat as champs.

But forget about this season. It's the truly bold prognosticator who can divine the World Series victor for 2008. Allow me to be the first to inform you: The Chicago Cubs are going all the way.

Why? A number of factors, not least of which is last week's announcement that real estate mogul Sam Zell is buying the Tribune Co. for $8.2 billion and plans to sell the Cubs to pay for the purchase. Whoever buys the team will need deep pockets as well as a fervent belief in the magical -- the Cubbies haven't won the World Series since 1908.

The Tribune Co. paid a paltry $20.1 million for the Cubs in 1981. Already speculation is that the team will fetch $500 million to $600 million -- and that's without historic Wrigley Field, which could add another $100 million to the pot.

All told the deal could eclipse the record-setting $660 million paid for the Boston Red Sox in 2002 and vastly overshadow the $150 million Bill DeWitt Jr. and cronies ponied up for the Cardinals in 1996. (The Cardinals' sale included two parking garages that the ownership group flipped for $75 million.)

It's expected the Cubs new owner will want to quickly amend the "curse" that has haunted the team since its last World Series appearance in 1945. After 26 years of anemic spending, the Tribune went on a buying binge this past off-season. The team's addition of manager Lou Piniella, outfielder Alfonso Soriano and multi-year contract extension for third baseman Aramis Ramirez should provide any new owner with the ingredients for a formidable team. A few additional tweaks in the lineup could set the table for a World Series champion.

Who knows? Maybe 2008 will see perennial pitching disappointments Mark Prior and Kerry Wood throw an entire season. That in itself will be a miracle almost as unfathomable as the Cubs winning their first World Series in 100 years. When it happens, don't forget who told ya so.

-Chad Garrison

-Unreal

Larry Borowsky's Cardinals blog VivaElBirdos.com is a great read. Typically that's because Borowsky is a very good, very knowledgeable writer, and because he's got the go-to blog for diehard Cards faithful -- the sort who log in while the game is on to conduct the blog equivalent of a mass IM orgy. (Here they are in full flower during Game 7 of last year's NLCS.)

But today's elbirdos comment-fest is a special treat thanks to a Mets fan, Danny1986, who happened by to school the hometown crowd on Winners' Etiquette:

As a Mets fan, I want to first give congrats to the Cardinals on taking advantage of the opportunities granted to them last October. Winning a WS after barely completing a .500 season is impressive and truly an anomaly.

But I do want to alert you Cardinal loyalists to something that is very evident at this moment to everyone outside the 314 area code: Your team is not very good.

This is clear to those outside cardinal nation who are not blinded by the excessive celebration your organization and city feels is necessary on this opening series against your hated rivals. You celebrate how you want, but there's a clear indication that perhaps you just don't know how to win with class....

It goes on. ("You guys are overdoing this celebration to the level of disrespect, and it's angering a sleeping giant who only an idiot would deny is far more talented and athletic than you.") Well worth reading in its entirety.

Not surprisingly, Danny's declaration ruffled a few red feathers. Here's the full thread; scroll down to "Brooms" and go from there.

In the end, Borowsky interceded:

Update [2007-4-4 16:21:1 by lboros]: it's 2:15 p.m.; i'd like to propose that we just cede the argument to Danny1986. it's not that we all haven't been edified by that exchange, but you can have too much of a good thing. . . . i for one --- and i'm sure i speak for many --- think it's time to just congratulate danny and the mets on their two wins to open the season, and move on to more interesting subjects of conversation . . . . .[end update]

Fun while it lasted, though.

-Unreal