The Chris Moeller Archives

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I goofed on the Texas Rangers, their state, and their city in a post last week, but I suspect that the baseball fans in Texas are among the coolest people that live there.

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The dumbest of all the dumb ideas often suggested to improve Major League Baseball is the one where the league flip-flops the current designated hitter policy for both the World Series and for interleague games-- that is, use the DH in National League parks, and have the pitchers hit in American League parks. It's inevitably suggested that this concept would afford the opportunity for fans in the home city to "watch a different style of baseball". First alternate suggestion for these fans from Chris: buy a television. Two: If you really want to see how the designated hitter rule works-- in person, or you wonder what Lefty Softtosser would look like swinging a bat, and your local nine is conspiring against you on this front, take the summer off from school or work, buy a ticket from the local stagecoach company, and ride by hoof to the next outpost.

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I was so excited after the Cardinals' tense Game 1 victory, I had to go sit in my car and scream. You're welcome, neighbors.

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Shame on Nikon cameras. Their TV ad campaign in which Ashton Kutcher snaps photos from his balcony of beautiful women frolicking on the beach is incredibly insensitive concerning the way he treated Demi.

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As usual, the Cardinals franchise has been disrespected by FOX television. Home viewers didn't get to see Bob Gibson, Bruce Sutter, and Adam Wainwright throw out the ceremonial first pitches before Game 1. (They are the three living pitchers that have closed out Cardinals' World Championship games-- 1964, 1967, 1982, 2006.) Likewise, before Game 2, nobody in their living rooms got to see Hall of Famers Lou Brock and Red Schoendienst throw ceremonial first pitches. Then the series moved to Arlington, and the United States was shown Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki and former President George W. Bush each throw out pitches on consecutive nights. What gives?

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I'm not opposed to George Bush being invited to Rangers Park to throw out the first pitch of a Series game, but when he got there and walked onto the field, nobody arrested him.

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Through the first five games of the best of seven, the Cardinals' runs scored have been 3, 1, 16, 0, 2.

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The Great Pujols' 3 dingers in Game 3 were the stuff of legend. If the Rangers win Game 6 or 7, this Cardinals' season will still be notable forever for September's Mad Dash, Chris Carpenter's epic 1-0 shutout in Game 5 of the Division Series against Roy Halladay, and Pujols' Fall Classic Game 3.

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Last night's 4-2 loss to Texas was humbling indeed for the Cardinals, what with that bizarre, failed hit-and-run, the many chances blown at the bat, and Tony LaGenius' dozen or so distinct mistakes. The bullpen phone fiasco and the manager's oddball explanation afterwards was downright embarrassing, but even worse from a competitive standpoint was taking the bat out of his best hitter's hands twice by bunting a man over ahead of his at-bat. The worst of all, and nobody is talking about this one today at all, curiously, was that he pulled Carpenter from the mound in a 2-2 game in the 8th with 3 right-handers due to bat in the inning and after having thrown only 101 pitches. What about Carpenter being this generation's Bob Gibson does LaRussa not understand?

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When contemplating LaRussa's maddening resentment towards any potential Cardinals team success that does not have his personal stamp upon it, I still think back to the disrespect that the manager showed towards the talents of shortstop Ozzie Smith in 1996. Now that I know the manager's competitive personality a little better after his 16 seasons at the helm-- his likes and dislikes-- I realize it must have hacked him off something fierce all those years in the American League watching Ozzie in St. Louis performing somersaults and back flips on the field. Tony believes that untucking your jersey on the field after the game is disrespecting baseball so I'm pretty sure that back flips have always been on the forbidden list.

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The national anthems performed at Busch Stadium in Games 1 and 2 were very disappointing. St. Louis is one of the country's great musical cities, yet the Cardinals gave us Trace Adkins and the first hillbilly winner of "American Idol." (I'm not going to look up his name.) Ugh, was the team trying to out-Texas the Rangers? That was yucky. On Wednesday night, here's hoping for some Chuck Berry, Clark Terry, Fontella Bass, Michael McDonald, David Sanborn, Grace Bumbry, Nelly, or Nikko Smith.

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Play the Tim: I enjoy broadcasters Joe Buck and Tim McCarver enjoying each other on the air. No criticism of FOX in this respect. Those two guys are great. "Playing the Tim" is what I call it when Joe sets up the elder Tim for a joke (even though Tim is neither a cutting edge personality nor particularly funny), then you try to predict what Tim will say in response. During either Game 3 or 4, Joe pointed out that Rangers outfielder David Murphy is the first former student and player at Baylor University to play in the World Series since Mule Watson (N.Y. Giants) in 1923. Joe asked: "Could Mule Watson hit the slider?" I "played the Tim": I guessed that he would say: "The slider didn't exist in 1923." I was wrong. His response: "He was a horse."

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If you take only one fact about me to your grave, make it this one: I hate the song "God Bless America" being played at the ballgame. I hate everything about this unfortunate spectacle. I hate the ugly militarism. I hate the often-accompanying "flyovers" that waste your tax dollars and help to keep our kids malnourished and undereducated. I hate the posturing and the arrogance. I hate the theism of the song title and lyric. I hate the repetition since the league already wraps itself in the flag during the national anthem before each game, which should be more than enough. I hate the goddamn song itself-- so banal and hollow. Most of all, I hate the timing of each performance. Ever since September 11th, "God Bless America" has marked the 7th inning stretch of every postseason baseball game-- and plenty of the regular season games as well.

Here's a little newsflash for everybody: there is already a song to play during the 7th inning stretch. It's called "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." It's upbeat, it's catchy, it's fun to sing with your friends and especially with strangers, and it sounds fucking awesome on the organ. There's a part in the song where you can mad lib the name of your favorite team, and near the end, you get to shout out numbers before this great big dramatic conclusion. It's a gas, and no other sport has a fun sing-along of any kind during a break in the action, and that's one more reason that baseball kicks ass. The 7th inning stretch is designed to be in the middle of the inning so that it will always immediately follow a defensive third out by the home team. There's a natural excitement built in with this, and sure enough, in the World Series, those 7th inning defensive outs become even more thrilling as the crowd roars. Yet every night of October during the last decade instead, the crowd's excitement gets predictably tempered by a maudlin stadium announcer who comes on the public address system and dourly requests that we all honor the war dead with a sober rendition of a mediocre Tin Pan Alley funkiller. I wonder if it's true that Commissioner Selig and his wife pause during their lovemaking to duet the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

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Revised World Series prediction from last week: Cardinals in seven.