House of Cards

After watching my Cardinals play over the past two weeks, I can say that I’ve officially turned my attention to football. Good riddance baseball, see you again in 2008.

I mean, just a few days ago, the Cards were just a game out of first place in the Central. Their competition? The Brewers, who have absolutely sh*t the bed since May, and the Cubs, who have absolutely sh*t the bed since 1908.

Destiny again appeared to be on the Cards side. We’d be watching meaningful postseason baseball again this fall!

Then the Ankiel story broke. Reporters hounded the team. MLB said they wanted to “talk” to Rick. On a scale of 1 to 10, that kind of negative attention and distraction registered about 22 in the St. Louis clubhouse.

Coincidentally or not, the Cards have lost 7 straight, including a 3 game sweep by the Reds. Now 5 full games back, the Cards are pretty much done. Thank you very much, see you next year.

The return of Ankiel was one of the best storylines of the season, especially when it looked liked he would be the one to lead the Cards into the postseason. Then the storyline turned real ugly, and even diehard Card fans like myself didn’t know what to make of the guy.

But I don’t know if you can completely blame the Ankiel story for the Cards’ collapse. I mean, this was a team that played way over its head for the past month and a half, in spite of injuries, distractions, tragedies, and just sheer bad luck that would spell certain doom for other teams.

My buddy Greg lives in St. Louis and follows the Cards closely. He had some interesting thoughts on the developments of the past couple of days:

“On a more personal level, the destruction of this Cards team has finally occurred. People will point to the Ankiel story as the source, but it’s really the loss of Duncan and Rolen out of the line up. Tip of the cap to management and the players for making it this far with a depleted and old lineup, missing the ace (Carpenter), and all the off field drama (Josh Hancock’s death, LaRussa possibly leaving, Spezio to rehab, etc. etc.). That being said, I’ve that feeling you get when you’re breaking up with a girl when it comes to this team… You know you’re going to feel better once it’s over but you keep wanting to give them one more chance, so you just feel sick to your stomach.”

2008 is sure to bring a lot of changes to St. Louis, but one thing is for certain: Albert Pujols will be playing 1st base and batting third. Aside from that, I expect a lot of familiar faces will be gone (Eckstein? Rolen? Edmonds? La Russa?)

And maybe it’s time. The core of this team has had a fantastic run over the past four or five years. They were in the playoffs nearly every year, went to two World Series, and won one. It’s tough to ask for too much more, but having watched this team, you always left expecting more. That’s the price of success, I suppose.

Maybe it’s just a tad premature to offer the eulogy, but as a fan, I’m ready to turn the page – both on this season and on the team as a whole. Change has to happen for any ballclub, and it’s entirely correct to say that the Cards have done what they could to resist it. It sure has been fun though.

-Posted by Rev. Shaw Moore

Still the Natural or just a busted Ankiel?

I wrote a glowing post here a few weeks back about the return of Rick Ankiel to the majors.

Now comes word that Ankiel received shipments of HGH through a Florida pharmacy in 2004, right before MLB banned it as a performance enhancing substance.

As a Cards fan, I am positively sick to my stomach.

Bernie Miklasz with the St. Louis Post Dispatch has an excellent (and early) take on what this means for Ankiel, the Cardinals, and Major League Baseball.

Rick Ankiel Is Not Walking Through That Door

Success doesn’t really breed happiness. You would think it does, but it surely does not.

Take this year’s St. Louis Cardinals. Last year, I was thrilled beyond belief that I got to see my team win the World Series. After coming close to the pinnacle for the last few years, an otherwise mediocre team put it together for a 3 or 4 week stretch and won the whole thing. It wasn’t quite the most gratifying thing that has ever happened in my life, but as a Cards fan, it was pretty f’ing cool.

It was happy times in Cardinal Nation.

Then this season started and the whole sh*thouse went up in flames. We lost our ace Chris Carpenter to a blown-up elbow; he’s due to come back sometime in 2017. Without him, the staff’s ERA has ballooned to a healthy spot just over 5.00 earned runs a game.

Scott Rolen’s arthritic shoulder turned our power hitting, slick fielding third baseman into a poor man’s Scott Brosius. Edmonds’ collection of head, neck and back injuries have kept him on the bench, and the two year deal he signed before the start of the season looks to be about two years too long. Even Pujols has been having a so-so year, or at least compared with his stats from years past.

For a fan base generally regarded as a good, supportive crowd, things have been downright sour along the Mississippi this summer. I went to a game in St. Louis earlier this past June against the Phils and watched 90 year old Jamie Moyer carve the Cardinals up. Judging the abuse hurled at Juan Encarnacion that night, I feared his life was in danger.

Seriously. And remember, this is mild-mannered St. Louis - not the Bronx.

Things have generally stayed as sour since that June night. That is, at least until this past week when Cards fans received a glimmer of hope:

The return of the Rick.

Yes, this is the same Rick Ankiel who once dazzled opposing hitters with a mid-90’s fastball and a Koufax like curveball. To watch him throw was amazing; he was simply the best pitching prospect the Cardinals had produced since they traded Steve Carlton away. He was the next Bob Gibson.

That is, until he went absolute bat sh*t crazy and couldn’t throw the ball near the plate to save his life. It was a tragedy of EPIC proportions. From 60 feet, he was liable to kill somebody sitting in the 10th row behind home plate. There is no other way to describe it – he absolutely melted down, and there was nothing – NOTHING – anybody could do to stop it.

The battle against wildness was a losing one, and Rick said he was done as a pitcher. Then Rick said he wanted to be an outfielder. So the Cards brass shipped him off to low-A minor league clubs in their system and tried to develop him into an outfielder. Everyone knew he was a supremely talented athlete, but it was a stretch to say the least.

Quick side note: Apparently the Macho Man Randy Savage was once a promising baseball prospect in the Montreal Expos system who threw with his right hand. Then he suffered a freak accident that forced him to learn how to throw left-handed or give up baseball entirely. Of course, he learned how to throw left-handed and he made it back to professional baseball.

Now that could be just some inspirational yarn my high school baseball coach told us, and I have never corroborated it or verified its authenticity. Hell, I even get my wrestlers wrong from time to time (ask Ren). But that’s the type of feat Ankiel was attempting – reinventing himself as a ballplayer at the highest professional level in baseball.

So for a couple of years, Ankiel existed as a curious indulgence for Cards fans. He would show up at Spring Training and play moderately well, but no one really ever assumed he’d do anything as an outfielder. He was trade bait. Some people assumed he might start pitching again.

That is until he started hitting bombs off everybody. He hit 30 or so HRs for AAA Memphis before being called up to the big club last week. And guess what?

He’s still hitting bombs.

He’s got 3 HRs and 6 RBI in 4 games. He hit two in one game against LA, plus he made an amazing, back-to-the-infield catch on the warning track.

Cardinal Nation is positively giddy.

I tried explaining the magnitude of this to the wife, how nobody makes it back from what the Rick went through. She did her best to comprehend what I was telling her. She nodded her head understandingly, as if deep in thought, and replied:

“At least he’s hot”.

OK, so I guess he’s got that going for him too.

But for as putrid as this season has been (to this point), the Cards are only 5 ½ games back in the gawd-awful NL Central. That’s amazing in and of itself. And now we have the Rick patrolling RF for the time being, it may be just the shot in the arm that gets the Cards moving.

Of course, that is until the supernova implodes again. So you’ll understand why I’m keeping my fingers crossed.