House of Cards
At one point about three weeks into April, the St. Louis Cardinals were off to their best start since 1944, but I wasn't writing about it. Now it should be obvious why. The success was a mirage. Team chairman Bill "De Wallet" DeWitt has been going cheap ever since Albert Pujols, Chris Carpenter, Jeff Weaver, and company brought home the 2006 title, and they don't have anything close to the necessary firepower this season to push for the championship.
Last year's payroll that hovered around $100 million is now down to $85 million, despite another booming year of attendance in 2008. The rocky economy makes for a convenient scapegoat, but I propose the notion that the skid in attendance this year has more to do with the fact that the club has only one marketable player currently on its roster, while the club, in '08, allowed the division-rival Cubs of Chicago to make their first back-to-back post-season appearance since the introduction of the Model T.
My late maternal grandfather was a big believer in the wisdom of the common man, or perhaps more accurately, the overheard word on the street. In retirement, he was obsessively worried about his physical health, and it dawned on me once, listening to him, that if a doctor told him something, he was capable of doubting it interminably, but if he overhead two men his age saying the same thing on a bench at the shopping mall, it was gospel.
I'm sometimes that same way. That's why I'm buying into this blog post that appeared earlier in the month on the popular Cardinals fan site Vivaelbirdos.com. It regards an unsubstantiated conversation that took place in a bar early in the season, and I believe every word of it. Especially, the part about the Cardinals' braintrust and the general manager (the "MO" in question) being a puppet of DeWitt. The critic from the traditional media would consider this style of reporting representative of the entire scourge of the blogosphere, but the only difference between this and Selena Roberts' biography of Alex Rodriguez is that in her book, the quoted player would be anonymous.
After six weeks of ballgames, the plaster cracks are starting to show on this Cardinals team, and the caulk that's available to fill those cracks (his last name's "Carpenter," not "Plasterer"-- imperfect metaphor) has pitched fewer than 32 innings since the conclusion of the '06 World Series. The Birds are coming up short of muscle in the batting lineup, short on bench performance, short in the bullpen, and desperately short now in the starting rotation. Their defense, with inexpensive players asked to take over brand new positions on the diamond, has been woeful.
Fans were told two years ago to prepare for a "youth movement" and an "improved" minor-league system, replacing what I considered to have been a tried-and-true system of loading the diamond with skilled, solid big-leaguers-- known commodities. The old system, we were told, had become unsustainable because it cost too much and because it left the minor-league system depleted, even though the previous general manager that perfected that system-- a guy run out of town in 2007 only to immediately resurrect the Cincinnati club-- had averaged 94 wins in the seven years ranging from 2000 through 2006, while keeping up what seemed to everyone except his boss the sanity of a middle-market payroll.
What's really annoying (for those of us who were right) is being scolded by the apologist fans or members of the St. Louis sports media for being unfair. St. Louis sports personalities, on the field and off, have it pretty easy when it comes to having to fend off criticism. It's jarring to consider how badly new Cards' shortstop Khalil Greene-- one of the recent cost-saving reclamation projects-- would be getting booed if he were washing out in Boston, Chicago, or Philadelphia the way he is in St. Louis. Yesterday, starting pitcher Todd Wellemeyer-- another unproven commodity counted on to be a staple this year-- coughed up 4 runs in the first inning of a big game against the division-leading Brewers, taking his team out of the contest virtually from the start. He walked 7 batters and plunked two more through 5 1/3 innings. Yet the local paper didn't refer to his outing as "bad" or even "rough," only "strange." No punches being pulled there.
One of the Post-Dispatch columnists today reported that the current stumble came about "suddenly," as if any informed observers couldn't have predicted that rotation stopper Carpenter, and outfielders Rick Ankiel and Ryan Ludwick would be susceptible to injuries, that Atlanta retread Blaine Boyer and a pair of other untried minor-league closers would be too little to shore up the right-hand side of the bullpen, that the rotation would be so shorthanded already this early in the season, that veteran middle-infielder and wannabe slugger Greene would flail away at so many pitches outside the strike zone, or that manager Tony LaRussa would struggle to find protection for Albert Pujols in the middle of the lineup. If it weren't for Pujols, rock-steady catcher Yadi Molina, or their commendable skipper LaRussa, this team would be staring up at every club in the division except the Pirates, and they've been handled easily head-to-head by those same Bucs.
There are a couple of fun players to watch on the Cardinals this summer, an All-Star Game coming to town in July, and plenty of available semi-affordable seats at home games for the first time in years, but the team, as it's constructed now, isn't going anywhere but in the direction of a modest 83 to 84-win season, at best, and to all the tee times they can handle in the month of October.
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Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker and dim bulb James Harrison says he won't join his teammates, the Super Bowl Champions, when they're honored for their NFL Championship at the White House later this year. "If you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers," Harrison said in reference to President Obama, "Invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, (the President) would've invited Arizona if they had won."
Yep, that's how Obama rolls.
In a related story, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin returned the Super Bowl championship trophy to the league commissioner's office on Monday. "They would have just given it to Arizona if we had lost," Tomlin reasoned.
Last year's payroll that hovered around $100 million is now down to $85 million, despite another booming year of attendance in 2008. The rocky economy makes for a convenient scapegoat, but I propose the notion that the skid in attendance this year has more to do with the fact that the club has only one marketable player currently on its roster, while the club, in '08, allowed the division-rival Cubs of Chicago to make their first back-to-back post-season appearance since the introduction of the Model T.
My late maternal grandfather was a big believer in the wisdom of the common man, or perhaps more accurately, the overheard word on the street. In retirement, he was obsessively worried about his physical health, and it dawned on me once, listening to him, that if a doctor told him something, he was capable of doubting it interminably, but if he overhead two men his age saying the same thing on a bench at the shopping mall, it was gospel.
I'm sometimes that same way. That's why I'm buying into this blog post that appeared earlier in the month on the popular Cardinals fan site Vivaelbirdos.com. It regards an unsubstantiated conversation that took place in a bar early in the season, and I believe every word of it. Especially, the part about the Cardinals' braintrust and the general manager (the "MO" in question) being a puppet of DeWitt. The critic from the traditional media would consider this style of reporting representative of the entire scourge of the blogosphere, but the only difference between this and Selena Roberts' biography of Alex Rodriguez is that in her book, the quoted player would be anonymous.
After six weeks of ballgames, the plaster cracks are starting to show on this Cardinals team, and the caulk that's available to fill those cracks (his last name's "Carpenter," not "Plasterer"-- imperfect metaphor) has pitched fewer than 32 innings since the conclusion of the '06 World Series. The Birds are coming up short of muscle in the batting lineup, short on bench performance, short in the bullpen, and desperately short now in the starting rotation. Their defense, with inexpensive players asked to take over brand new positions on the diamond, has been woeful.
Fans were told two years ago to prepare for a "youth movement" and an "improved" minor-league system, replacing what I considered to have been a tried-and-true system of loading the diamond with skilled, solid big-leaguers-- known commodities. The old system, we were told, had become unsustainable because it cost too much and because it left the minor-league system depleted, even though the previous general manager that perfected that system-- a guy run out of town in 2007 only to immediately resurrect the Cincinnati club-- had averaged 94 wins in the seven years ranging from 2000 through 2006, while keeping up what seemed to everyone except his boss the sanity of a middle-market payroll.
What's really annoying (for those of us who were right) is being scolded by the apologist fans or members of the St. Louis sports media for being unfair. St. Louis sports personalities, on the field and off, have it pretty easy when it comes to having to fend off criticism. It's jarring to consider how badly new Cards' shortstop Khalil Greene-- one of the recent cost-saving reclamation projects-- would be getting booed if he were washing out in Boston, Chicago, or Philadelphia the way he is in St. Louis. Yesterday, starting pitcher Todd Wellemeyer-- another unproven commodity counted on to be a staple this year-- coughed up 4 runs in the first inning of a big game against the division-leading Brewers, taking his team out of the contest virtually from the start. He walked 7 batters and plunked two more through 5 1/3 innings. Yet the local paper didn't refer to his outing as "bad" or even "rough," only "strange." No punches being pulled there.
One of the Post-Dispatch columnists today reported that the current stumble came about "suddenly," as if any informed observers couldn't have predicted that rotation stopper Carpenter, and outfielders Rick Ankiel and Ryan Ludwick would be susceptible to injuries, that Atlanta retread Blaine Boyer and a pair of other untried minor-league closers would be too little to shore up the right-hand side of the bullpen, that the rotation would be so shorthanded already this early in the season, that veteran middle-infielder and wannabe slugger Greene would flail away at so many pitches outside the strike zone, or that manager Tony LaRussa would struggle to find protection for Albert Pujols in the middle of the lineup. If it weren't for Pujols, rock-steady catcher Yadi Molina, or their commendable skipper LaRussa, this team would be staring up at every club in the division except the Pirates, and they've been handled easily head-to-head by those same Bucs.
There are a couple of fun players to watch on the Cardinals this summer, an All-Star Game coming to town in July, and plenty of available semi-affordable seats at home games for the first time in years, but the team, as it's constructed now, isn't going anywhere but in the direction of a modest 83 to 84-win season, at best, and to all the tee times they can handle in the month of October.
---
Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker and dim bulb James Harrison says he won't join his teammates, the Super Bowl Champions, when they're honored for their NFL Championship at the White House later this year. "If you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers," Harrison said in reference to President Obama, "Invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, (the President) would've invited Arizona if they had won."
Yep, that's how Obama rolls.
In a related story, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin returned the Super Bowl championship trophy to the league commissioner's office on Monday. "They would have just given it to Arizona if we had lost," Tomlin reasoned.
posted by CM @ 4:09 PM
2 Comments:
The Cubs are up for sale and are only spending money to gain a larger sale price. The Cardinals now have their new stadium which probably doubled the value of the franchise overnight. Cardinals ownership has zero incentive to win until they decide to sell the franchise. Until then you siphon money away from the franchise into your personal pockets. Its all financial.
I find it hard to care what happens in professional sports anymore. For example, why should I spend money on a Twins hat? So I can pay for the right to advertise someone’s business in which I have no financial interest?
I applaud Harrison. I don’t care who’s in the White House, I wouldn’t go. Meeting a politician is not a reward or an honor!
TA
Come on Harrison, smile - you've earned it!! Second place would never get you a trip to the White House. I haven't seen Obama in any photo ops with Iowa State House runner-up Chris Moeller!
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