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?

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.

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!