The Chris Moeller Archives

Holliday's boner

This year's October baseball coverage on the CM Blog may wind up being abbreviated. The Cardinals have dropped the first two in the best of three series against the Dodgers.

No one could have written last night's story that Matt Holliday, the fantastic slugger whose arrival in August catapulted the Cardinals to the National League Central Division title, would lose a fly ball in the lights with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 2. I confess that the value, or lack of value, of Holliday's glove ability never even crossed my mind during the last two months. Is he a good fielder or is he a liability in left? I never even weighed the question. It's like losing a game because Chris Carpenter ran the bases badly.

Is Holliday's dropped ball, which opened the floodgates to a two-run walk-off Dodgers rally, the Cardinals' "Bartman" moment? It's an interesting question. I say it is only if we acknowledge that a Cubs' "Bartman" moment is not the same as a Cardinals' "Bartman" moment. The Cardinals, for example, do not have a 95-year-old championship drought in 2009, as the Cubs had in 2003. The Cardinals have a three-year championship drought. The Cardinals were not a game away from the pennant last night, as the Cubs were in Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS. And Steve Bartman did not hit a home run during the same game that the inauspicious baseball clanged off his glove, as Holliday did.

I've got a knot the size of a grapefruit in my stomach this morning, and nobody feels worse than Matt Holliday, but the Cardinals still survive, and Holliday, a Hall-of-Fame-caliber player, can make it up to all of us by busting out offensively yet in this series and then signing a long-term deal with the Cards this winter. He shouldn't have to worry about any death threats either way.


2:30pm addendum: On the bright side, it will be a golden moment in the history of Cardinals fans when Matt Holliday gets a standing ovation in his first at-bat of Game 3 Saturday night at Busch Stadium.

posted by CM @ 7:46 AM