Tagged: Cardinals-Dodgers

Nice Prediction, Keith

Cardinals over the Dodgers. Followed by Cardinals rallying tonight to beat the Dodgers in Game Three and then the inevitable great next starts by Carpenter and Wainwright doing in L.A.

The inevitable great next starts by Carpenter and Wainwright will be next April.
Truth be told, a lot of us blew the call on the series. But I’ve been watching Joel Pineiro very closely since mid-season (fantasy league stuff) and about September 10 or so his unhittable and essential sinker stopped doing so. To assume he could be the stopgap in the season-breaking game for the Cards was folly on my part. And Tony LaRussa’s.
And underestimated in the finale, where the heck was Yadier Molina going from second base, with one out and the Cards desperate for a run? Did he lose track of outs? Was he in a hurry to start the off-season?
MEANWHILE IN BOSTON:
Maybe the Red Sox do go out in three or four but at least Jason Bay revived my interest in collecting “You Knows.” Years ago every athlete relied on the verbal crutch to get through many a dimwitted interviewer’s questions, and my first national publicity came when Sports Illustrated featured my little display of the most frequent usage, while I was at UPI Radio in 1980.
Said Jason in a sound bite just played on TBS:
“I think people tend to forget, you know, those guys are trying to get us out. Two guys that are pretty good, that are not just, you know, flipping balls out there underhanded and we’re not getting hits, I mean, you know, I think, you know, not passing the buck by any means, we need to do, you know, a better job offensively but, you know, the guy wasn’t 15-and-whatever he was on the year, because he’s, you know, doesn’t know what he’s doing, you know it’s just, their pitching’s better than our hitting right now.”
Eight in 27 seconds, hardly a record (Micheal Ray Richardson of the Knicks actually managed something like 16 in 32 as I remembered — he was a rehabilitated stutterer who had swapped “you know” in for his other problem, so he was ruled out in favor of somebody who produced about 9 in 20 seconds) but perhaps the MLB mark for the 21st Century.
BABE RUTH AND A BIG CROWD:
As promised, here’s the New York Times follow-up on the September 9, 1928 film just found of Babe Ruth and a crowd of 85,000 at Yankee Stadium. And I hepped!

 

Outfield Defense – Again!

OK, I might have to completely revise my assessment of the Yankees. In the Bronx last night, in one of the ten best baseball games I’ve ever attended, the New York club tied it on Rodriguez’s homer, benefitted from a horrible call in rightfield, staved off bases loaded and none out on Robertson’s pitching, and got the winning run on Teixeira’s parabola off the top of the left field wall.

But they won it because Nick Swisher proved me a liar with a beautifully executed play on an inattentive Carlos Gomez in the fourth inning, and because of how A.J. Burnett pitched in the litmus test for his post-season reliability. As Delmon Young busted it for home on Matt Tolbert’s single, Gomez over-ran second, Swisher threw a dart behind him, and he was retired before Young could cross the plate with what would have been the game’s first run. Burnett walked five and hit two – but wriggled out by giving up only three hits and stranding eight of the runners. My 11-year old nephew, attending the first post-game season of his life, stated with confidence after Burnett got one of his six strikeouts, “that was some slider!”
So the Yankee outfield defense already exceeded expectations in terms of plays back to the infield or the plate, and Burnett probably did the same. Meanwhile the Twins’ chances are not only bad enough, but what is wrong with Joe Nathan?
Saturday I would expect the Cardinals to avoid elimination (and perhaps as my pal Joe Magrane suggests, rally to beat the Dodgers behind the second starts of Carpenter and Wainwright) and the Rockies and Phillies continue to move to their inevitable fifth game back in Philadelphia.
BABE RUTH FILM UPDATE
I’ll go into this in a future post but it appears the Hall of Fame agrees with me, that film is from the A’s-Yankees doubleheader of September 9, 1928, with more than 85,000 in attendance (and probably filmed more for that reason, than for the presence of Ruth).
Some additional notes: I got it wrong, the Yankees began to wear numbers not in 1931 but 1929, thus 1928 is also the latest the film could be. And MLB Productions got it wrong, that is 
not Lou Gehrig following Ruth to the plate, but the lankier, righthanded hitting Bob Meusel. And even the Hal was wrong. Photo ID whiz Tom Shieber was also inspired to look at a panoramic photo that has always been marked “1928 World Series” that, like the Ruth film, showed no holiday or Series ceremonial bunting hanging anywhere in the ballpark. As of now they have re-marked it to date to the A’s-Yanks doubleheader – Shieber also notes that the socks of the visiting players in their picture don’t look like those worn by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1928, but like the A’s.
Socks. And you think I’m nuts.
The Times may be doing more on this little bit of historical sleuthing. In the interim, everybody wanted to correct an impression that MLB Productions was “stumped” by the film – it was more that they were looking to open up the archaeology dig to fans.

AND FINALLY:
Yes, it’s true. Bill O’Reilly and I in the same place at the same time, in the Yankee suites restaurant, and then three rows and seven seats apart. No one was injured, and everybody had a good time.
And to everybody who’s asked about my Dad – thank you, and he thanks you. Got in several hours with him before the Mental Vacation in the Bronx, and several late tonight. They keep throwing him spitballs and curves and he fouls them off as adroitly as Richie Ashburn in his prime. His main issues have all but been resolved, it’s now just a sequence of complications. But he keeps fouling them away and hanging in there.