A few days ago, I posted a prediction on who would return from rehab first between Junior Spivey and Larry Bigbie, and who would be sent down to clear roster space. I made the biased and hopeful guess based on some convoluted reasoning that Bigbie would come up first and that Spiezio would be sent down.

Joe Buck said during Wednesday’s game that La Russa expected Bigbie to take three weeks on a AAA rehab assignment before coming up, and Matt Leach answers a question in his comments about when Spivey will be getting a call-up after hitting and running competently against AAA pitching. “Spivey’s doing well, and I don’t expect he’ll be down in Memphis for all that long.” If Spivey comes up first, Hector Luna’s the obvious man to send down, with Miles serving as the backup middle infielder and starting second baseman against starting RHP’s with bad splits against lefties. In that scenario, when Bigbie comes up either Schumaker or Rodriguez would be sent down–which one will depend on how they play over the next few weeks, to state the vacuous.

In the absence of a Cardnilly series preview, here’s how Reds “ace” Aaron Harang has fared against the current Cardinals–an aggregate line of .290/.337/.505 in 93 at-bats. It wouldn’t surprise me much if Gary Bennett starts again tonight after a solid defensive game last night. He’s gone 4-6 against Harang vs. Molina’s 1 for 7. I imagine Carpenter has a say in that lineup decision, though. Juan Encarnacion has had some success against Harang, 2-4 with a double and a walk, so fingers crossed that he’ll continue his improved hitting of late. Harang’s historically better against lefties than right-handed batters, so left field will probably be manned by So Taguchi. Rolen will probably rest tonight with his .258 OPS over 15 at-bats against Harang, and Scott Spiezio will finally get a chance to earn his roster spot at third base. (If Hector Luna plays third over Rolen and Spiezio, I’d guess La Russa isn’t happy with Spiezio over something or other… He was called back to the dugout in yesterday’s game from a pinch-hitting appearance over Jason Marquis, who bunted Aaron Miles to second in the eleventh inning, down by a run.)

Added later: A fine game preview at Cardinals Diaspora, and also a welcome simmah-down-now message.

Jim Lindgren at Volokh Conspiracy is either being sarcastic or very dense in this post about last night’s episode of South Park. I didn’t see it, but I get the joke from his description of it. That tends to lead me to believe that he got the joke and is fooling around. Glenn Reynolds seems to have fallen for it too.

The joke was this: Kyle convinced the president of the Fox network to air an episode of Family Guy in which the prophet Mohammed is controversially depicted handing Peter Griffin a football helmet with a fish on it; and as that scene is about to air on Family Guy (on South Park, got that?) Comedy Central splashes a black screen with text describing what is happening in the scene and a message that Comedy Central chose not to air the offensive scene. The joke was really aimed at Viacom, Comedy Central’s parent company, for censoring the episode of South Park mocking Scientology.

Glenn Reynolds says this about the episode after acknowledging that many commenters at VolCon pointed out that it was a joke: “Don’t like people mocking your religion? Threaten them with violence. It seems to work pretty well.” Insty should know better. Threaten them with lawsuits, man!

When cable TV was hooked up at mi casa on Monday, I had a DVR digital tuner set up, too. This thing is a great piece of electronics. It maintains a two hour buffer of whatever you’ve been watching, so you can rewind in the buffer to get your own instant replay. That’ll come in handy during college basketball, where it takes a minute or so for the engineers in the truck to put together a replay of some close play–if they ever show it at all. You can also set it to record stuff at certain times with one push of the button, so when I leave for work I can set it to record the Simpsons and King of the Hill episodes that come on at 5 and 5:30 when I’m almost always still working.

I found something very cool today. Before I left for softball practice, I was watching some ridiculous show on History Channel about flying saucers in Mexico. I’d watched about ten minutes or so before I had to split. Thinking it would be interesting to see where they were going with this, I hit the record button.

I just now started replaying this program and the box was smart enough to include the first ten minutes of the show that was stored in the buffer, appending the rest of the program to that section of the buffer. Most impressive.

Practice was a blast tonight, I did a bit better in the field and was able to track down a few flyballs and field a few groundballs cleanly. Pitched a little more consistently too. Unfortunately, our team is still short two players, ideally two women.

Tonight’s Cardinals game has been a peach, too. I DVR’ed it and have caught it from the fourth or so on. Still watching it now… Miles just committed his first error as a Cardinal here in the ninth chasing down a flyball in right, with Pujols and Encarnacion right there. He played a solid second base today, though. The bullpen’s been solid. Looper pitched a scoreless seventh, Thompson a scary but scoreless eighth, and Hancock just got the fourth out of the ninth to finish the game. Cards win, 8-3… Tomorrow night, the Soup looks to bounce back from a lousy start last Friday. (Later: Ha! Edmonds joked in a postgame interview that he’s getting old and slow and that’s why he barely mishandled a flyball to the wall. If he had gotten that ball, it would have been an incredible play.)

Back to the post:

The Cardinals website today has a very nice piece on Skip Schumaker, including plenty of positive quotations about him from first-base/outfield coach (and batting practice pitcher) Dave McKay.

“He can be a complete, complete outfielder. He’s playing well enough right now. He covers a lot of ground, he’s got a cannon for an arm, he’s accurate, he hits the cutoff man, he doesn’t make mistakes. He makes the plays he’s supposed to make and more. He’s going to be a very, very good outfielder.”

So this round of prognostication is a two-parter. First, you have to guess who’s the first player called up: either Junior Spivey from AAA or Larry Bigbie from his rehab assignment. Aside from an 0-8 day, Spivey’s been hitting well, and running very well. Bigbie hasn’t yet started his rehab assignment, although he should start on Monday when Memphis returns from a road trip, and he’s begun running in cleats. The second part of the prognostication game is to guess who’ll be sent down to Memphis to clear a roster spot for whichever player comes up. Most likely, the second part is dependent on whether you guess right for the first, since if Spivey comes up, an infielder would probably be sent down; if Bigbie comes up an outfielder would most likely be sent down. The twenty-five man roster is here.

My guess is that Spivey will stay in AAA until he either starts consistently making AAA pitching look silly or until the second base position in St. Louis deteriorates to the point of desperation. I’m not sure that either of these things will happen all season, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Spivey either stays in Memphis until he’s needed as to replace an injured player or he’s included in a trade package at some point this summer. (And I like Junior Spivey, who’s currently got a .406 OBA through six games in Memphis.) When Bigbie goes into his AAA rehab assignment, he’ll be joining a very crowded outfield with Chris Duncan in left, Shaun Boyd Prentice Redman in center, and John Gall in right with Prentice Redman Shaun Boyd in reserve. Bigbie will probably take Boyd’s spot for the majority of his assignment, playing center field (so as not to take time away from Duncan) and hitting lead-off to guarantee him the most at-bats per game. The Cardinals organization traded Ray King for Larry Bigbie, with Aaron Miles as a throw-in who didn’t quite fit in with the Rockies’ plans. They want Larry Bigbie on the field with the big club and not taking away at-bats from the Memphis outfielders. I expect he’ll be up with the club by the end of April. So there’s my guess for part one: Larry Bigbie over Junior Spivey.

As for part two… I’ve already written that there’s no benefit to the organization in sending Skip Schumaker down. Shaun Boyd is coming along well as the centerfielder/leadoff-hitter in Memphis and Skip’s holding his own against ML pitching thus far. I’m not a huge fan of John Rodriguez, but he’s looked solid in the field from what I’ve seen so far and he’s about as good a bat off our bench as we’ve got. My guess is that the player to come off the 25 man roster, then, comes from the infield. Miles is the starting 2nd baseman, so the options are between Spiezio and Luna. Spiezio can play first, second, third, and the corner outfield. Luna can play second, short, third, and corner outfield. If Luna is sent down before Spivey comes up, Eckstein’s backup would be Miles–and Spiezio would have to start at second, where he started once last season for the first time since 1999. If Spiezio is assigned to Memphis, Pujols wouldn’t have a backup on the bench. But he missed only 8 starts at first last season (DHing for most of those days, I think). Yadier Molina has played first before, and I imagine Gary Bennett wouldn’t mind filling in if necessary. Our best option to backup first would be Jim Edmonds, who has had nine starts at first since joining the Cardinals–most recently in 2004. And if Skip stays on the roster when Bigbie comes back, I count four outfielders who could play a solid centerfield: Larry Bigbie, Skip Schumaker, So Taguchi, and Jimmy Ballgame. Juan Encarnacion’s got experience playing center as well, but I’d take any of the other four there over him. It makes sense to get Edmonds a few starts at first just to give his legs a rest from time to time. Hector Luna’s had a start at second so far in the young season; Scott Spiezio’s played an inning in left field and had four plate appearances, one of which resulted in a walk and the rest in outs. I don’t yet see that Spiezio’s got a role on the team that can’t be better filled by other people in the organization. Nothing against the guy–not that I’ve got anymore say than any other jerk with a free website–but I’ll go out on a limb and make the crazy prognostication that Scott Spiezio will be Rico Washington’s backup in Memphis once Larry Bigbie is called up.

Update: After looking ahead in the schedule, I can make two more predictions… Tomorrow’s lineup against Doug Davis practically makes itself. I bet Bennett will catch Soup again and Rodriguez starts in left. It wouldn’t surprise me terribly if Scott Rolen gets his first day off on Friday, with Spiezio getting his first start against Aaron Harang of the Reds. Rolen’s struggled mightily against Harang to a .258 OPS (in fifteen AB). Depending on how Spiezio does in that game, I may have to change my guess.

Now that I’ve found this, I think there’s nothing left to be put on the internet.

In totally unrelated news, I’m whole-heartedly pulling for that one guy to break the record this season.

Some friends and I are trying to put together a softball team, and tomorrow should be the day when the complete team takes the practice field together for the first time. We had our second practice on Sunday where I found out that I’m a truly lousy infielder. And awful in the outfield. And truly horror-show on the mound. At least my hitting skills seem to have wintered fairly well.

The bad fielding isn’t a big problem yet, I don’t think. I grew up playing hockey and swimming, and only taught myself to swing a bat in the cages a few years ago. I learned how to throw by picking up the basic grips and techniques on the internets and throwing at a pitch-back in my backyard. But yesterday was only the second time ever that I’d played in the field against a batter and the first time I’d hit against a human pitcher. Our third practice is tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll do a lot better than last time. The biggest source of improvement won’t come from the experience gained on Sunday, but from wearing one of these fellows to keep a liner from bouncing up into my groins… And that’ll really clear your eyes out. (That last link goes to one of my favorite pages in the whole world wide web.) The legs are feeling pretty good tonight and think I’ll be ready to chase down some flyballs tomorrow.

Thorough…. Thoroughly maaaad!!! I’m almost tempted to put in a bid just to find out what the jackass looks like who’d produce a DVD to prove that he’d bought a hot dog.

The Memphis Redbirds will be having all their games carried by the MLB.com Gameday service this season. Here’s the Gameday from last night’s 4-1 loss to the New Orleans Zephyrs, Washington’s AAA affiliate. Anthony Reyes continued his AAA domination, going six innings, giving up one run on three hits and no walks with seven strikeouts. He was lifted for a pinch hitter with two outs and a man on second in the top of the seventh. The AAA bullpen must be taking their cues from the big club as Carmen Cali came in and gave up the game-winning two-run home run. Junior Spivey went 1-3 with a walk, a stolen base and no errors.

They also have quite a dance squad.

Something that I hadn’t thought of about yesterday’s game. Mark Mulder had a very strange day-night split last season: in day games, he was 2-5, 6.86 ERA, .350 OppBA; and in night games he went 14-3, 2.26, .234 OppBA. To illustrate using a technique shamelessly stolen from John Gasaway, by day he made opposing hitters look better than Albert Pujols or Derek Lee (congrats to the Cubs on locking him up); but at night Mark Mulder made those opposing hitters look like Yorvit Torrealba. Of course, the splits are an anomoly–a fluke. His ten inning complete-game shutout of the Astros in on April 23, 2005 was a 1:15 start, so it’s not like he was bad during the day. The day-night splits are pretty useless for evaluating pitchers, I’d say. I only bring it up because a few days ago, some joker at VeB was arguing that Mark Mulder is teh sux0r because of that useless statistic last season. Jason Marquis takes the mound tomorrow for the first major-league night game at the new Stadium.

Starting a little late, sorry…

Bottom of the fourth: To summarize… Bill Hall hit the first home run in major league play, a two run shot. (Shaun Boyd hit the first one overall… Unless the construction workers played a pick-up game that we don’t know about). The Cards tied it up last inning with a Pujols lead-off homer and a sac fly by Yadier to score Rolen.

To lead off this half inning, Mulder walked and Eckstein singled. Encarnacion bunted the pitcher and leadoff hitter over to open up first base for an IBB to Albert Pujols. Jim Edmond’s up now with bases loaded and one out…

Edmonds struck out. Rolen smacked a grounder past third and into the left field corner for a 2-rbi double. He’s the man! Cards up 4-2. Taguchi then struck out badly to end the inning with Pujols at third and Rolen on second. Mark Mulder looks to add to his 4 strikeouts.

End 6th: Rick Helling didn’t have much trouble with the Cards in this inning. I’m gonna give up on the liveblog and just enjoy the rest of the game.

HOLY SMOKES: Mulder had his career first home run in the bottom of the seventh with two outs, a full count, and Aaron Miles on first. He’s doubled and walked today as well. Cards up 6-2. Outstanding! His OPS is currently 2.114. First out of the top of the eighth was an amazing from-the-knees throw from Rolen to Pujols.

While paying for $2.70 gas on Saturday, I noticed the USA Today had a front page story on a so-called Gospel of Judas. Mental groaning followed; then more when I paid thirty dollars for three-quarters for a tank of gas. It turns out that National Geographic is running a big ol’ story on the discovery of this late second century gnostic piece of fiction as though it’s going to change Christianity today. Curiously, they timed the release of this story to coincide with the lead-up to The DaVinci Code movie’s release.

David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy was first to start mopping up the bullshit:

Suppose that sometime around the year 3,800 A.D., someone wrote a newspaper that began: “According to a recently-discovered document, which appears to have been written sometime before 1926, Benedict Arnold did not attempt to betray George Washington and the American cause, as is commonly believed. Rather, Benedict Arnold was acting at the request of George Washington, because Washington wanted Arnold to help him create a dictatorship of the proletariat and the abolition of private property.”

Add to that the further credibility gap that the Newspaper was written by tentative allies with whom Americans of the time shared neither a language nor philosophical similarities.

United Methodist Pastor Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping continues squeegeeing away the nonsense. The whole thing is worth reading, and not particularly long.

Sensing links to an essay written by whom he characterizes as “a bona fide Bible scholar of the first rank,” Dr. Ben Witherington [Part One, Part Two], who clearly knows what he’s dealing with:

Right at Easter time, just as the dandelions are starting to appear in my yard, a new crop of theories about Jesus and the Gospels usually pop up as well, often rushed into the Easter market. Clearly the appropriate amount of fertilizer has been applied to these supposed ‘new revelations’ to make such hot house theories grow, seemingly over night.

Fertilizer. Ha!

Also interesting, is a Islamic version of the story in which Jesus was lifted into heaven and Judas’ appearance transformed to Jesus’ so that Judas was crucified.

Thought those essays and stories might interest some people, and so I’ll pass ‘em along. I imagine not everyone who comes here is all that interested in Baseball. For those who are though, come back around 2:50 and stick around. I’ll be liveblogging the game while sitting on my ultra-comfortable couch watching the game on digital cable installed two hours ago.

There was some speculation when Spivey was sent down to AAA about whether the Cards would be picking up another second baseman, and specifically whether we’d take a shot with Brandon Phillips, who was in the recent past considered one of the best prospects in all of baseball. He’d been a bust with the Indians, and they DFA’d him to start the season. The Reds have claimed him and arranged for a trade: cash or a player to be named later. (While looking for that page, I also stumbled across Spiff’s revived PTBNL Cards Blog. Welcome back!)

If the Cards would have claimed Brandon Phillips, we could have fielded a middle infield consisting solely of toolsy yet frustrating prospects picked from the Indians system.

Not related, but there was a nice profile of Yadier Molina in yesterday’s P-D.

Update: Also not at all related, but Mark and Reggie must have had some good games and brought their numbers up. They’d gotten off to lousy starts in their first few games.

I figure Molina to have a good night with the bat. Hopefully Encarnacion, too. It’s early, but it would be good to get people off his back for a while. Facing a lefty, this would be a good game to sit Miles and give Hector Luna a chance to stick on the roster once Bigbie or Spivey is ready to come up. I’m pretty sure I’d read that La Russa was planning on playing him tonight.

[This is a most confusing post in which I sorta liveblog two games at once.]

Our young right handed relievers seem to be having trouble keeping the ball in the park today, but how about those at-bats by Skip Schumaker? Cards are down 3-2 heading into the top of the ninth. Miles will lead off, followed by Spiezio, Eckstein, Taguchi, and Pujols. Miles grounded out to Lee. Mike Shannon says he was robbed of a hit.

In San Francisco, the Braves are taking on the Giants, with Jamey Wright getting his first start. Through two innings, Wright’s gotten all six batters out in order using only 18 pitches. Three groundouts, two fly-outs, and a strikeout. I’m keeping an eye on that game since I wanted the Cards to sign him after he was non-tendered by the Rockies. He’s a huge right-hander who doesn’t give up many home runs (even though he’d pitched in Colorado most recently) and gets his outs by the groundball. He seemed a natural fit for the Cardinals. And he’s making $800,000 this year. I figure I’ll follow his season and see if I can figure out what the Cardinals didn’t like about him. (Aside from the low K/9 and high WHIP.) Much like many people compared Danny Haren’s season to Mark Mulder’s last year, I’ll see how Wright and Ponson compare.

Ugh… Juan Encarnacion is up with two outs and Eckstein on First. Shannon says “Encarnacion is the laaaaaast hope for the Redbirds.” He pops up to Junior Hairston and the hated Cubs win.

Through three innings now, Jamey Wright’s allowed one hit and gotten three more groundball outs, one of them a double play to erase the baserunner. He’s facing the minimum after three with a 8 run lead.

Update: His second time through the order, Wright issued a walk to Marcus Giles. Edgar Renteria lined out and Larry Jones grounded into a double-play. Still facing the minimum after four innings.

Seventh Inning Stretch: Wright got himself into a jam in the sixth, loading the bases with two walks and a single. Super-clutch Edgar Renteria managed a bases-loaded single to score a run. The next three batters were all outs, one of them a run-scoring groundout. In the top of the seventh, Wright struck out the side. Through seven innings, he’s thrown 89 pitches,issued 4 walks while striking out four, and given up two runs. The outs have been 12/5/4 G/F/K. I think Sidney Ponson can match that outing tomorrow to avoid a sweep by the loathsome Cubs, who’ll be sending out a rookie pitcher, Sean Marshall, who’s never pitched above AA. Over fifteen innings in Spring Training, Marshall was 0-1 with a 3.60 ERA. He gave up six runs on 10 hits and 8 walks with a hit-batsman and three home runs allowed while striking out 12. He should pitch slightly better in Chicago away from the Arizona desert where the Cubs have their spring camp. Here’s a Scout.com story about his injuries the past two seasons; John Sickels gave him a B- grade; Cardnilly notes the convergence in Marshall of two anecdotal nemeses: the soft-tossing lefthander and the unknown call-up.

Wright pitched into the eighth, giving up a single and a walk before being pulled. Both runners scored, so his line for the day: 7 IP, 5 hits, 4 runs, 5 walks and 4 strikeouts. I think it’s likely that Ponson will outperform that start tomorrow. Hopefully they’ll both end up with a wheezy-red W to start the season.

The Braves radio announcer said Wright’s was the longest outing by a Giants starter so far this season, then said something like “… but Chris Carpenter had a good outing.” I assume he meant Matt Morris.

The first Joe Morgan chat at ESPN of the season went down recently, and the Fire Joe Morgan had their fun with it. Good laughs, there.

At the Arizona Republic, Bob Young suggests trading Carlos Quentin to the Cardinals straight-up for Anthony Reyes. Around the time of the winter meetings, I posted what I thought was a plausible three-team trade that would have brought Quentin and Kaz Matsui to St. Louis, addressing LF and 2B in one fell swoop. Carlos Quentin didn’t make the Diamondbacks this year and is back in their AAA affiliate in Tuscon after putting up a .286/.437/.554 line with three home runs and 12 walks in Spring Training. It would be pretty exciting to have a 23 year-old left fielder putting up production like that this season. I wouldn’t mind picking up Craig Counsell from them either, although Junior Spivey showed some improvement with the bat in his first AAA start, going 2-4 although committing a fielding error.

Larry Walker was a special hitting instructor at the Cardinals Spring Training camp and a coach with the Canadian WBC team. It turns out that he’d had so much fun that he stuck on as a guest coach with the Cards. How can you blame him?

Here’s how I know, from the P-D:

“I knew things had to happen for me,” said Schumaker, who hit .250 in 24 at-bats spread over 27 games with the Cardinals last season. “You don’t want to see a guy like Bigbie get hurt to make the club, but it’s part of baseball and it happened. You have to put yourself in a good position and have a good spring to have a chance to make the team. I feel like that happened for me.”

Added Schumaker: “I have to be aggressive. I have to make things happen for myself because I don’t have those huge tools. I’m not going to go up there and hit home runs. I have to do other stuff to help the team win. Whether it’s defense or baserunning, that’s what I have to do. I’m not going to hit a home run every night. That’s not even close to happening.”

Schumaker hit 15 home runs in 2,014 minor-league at-bats. His reward for a career moment [hitting his first MLB home run] came after the game when guest coach Larry Walker asked for his glove. After handing it over, Schumaker was doused with a beer bath.

Larry Walker’s a good guy to have around the clubhouse, eh? In more Schumaker news: Derrick Goold was asked in the Birdland comments about who would be sent down once Larry Bigbie is ready for major league action. Derrick answers:

What a grand question. It seemed an educated guess that Skip Schumaker would held down when Bigbie was ready. (He’ll probably come off the DL and then head for a rehab assignment. He’s got to play before he’s around the majors.) Schumaker could play his way into staying. Take away the homer yesterday and he’s still playing well enough to add speed, defense and a line-drive hitter to the bench. For some of these guys they are still playing for jobs like it was spring training.

In order of likelihood, I’d guess one of these guys would be sent down: Luna, Rodriguez, Schumaker, Spiezio. Luna and Spiezio play all the same positions and Spiezio benefits from veteran mystique, world series experience, and switch-hitting skills. Schumaker’s a better baseball player than Rodriguez and can be trusted in any outfield spot and to run bases competently. Skip’s also got Jimmy Edmonds mentoring him now, and his role (CF/leadoff) on the AAA team is being filled by Shaun Boyd now. He doesn’t have all that much more to learn in AAA that he can’t learn as a bench player with guys like Pujols, Edmonds, Rolen, (sometimes) Walker, and McRae teaching him the finer points of taking good at-bats. Rodriguez has a lot to learn that requires everyday starts.

Update: In that same post at Birdland, Goold also sings the praises of Kevin Ool, who’ll be pitching in the Springfield Cardinals’ bullpen this season. Here’s what I wrote about the trade that brought him into the organization:

[In the trade that sent Mike Myers back to his former team...] We got two minor leaguers from Boston, not surprisingly, neither listed in John Sickels’ overview of their top 20 prospects. One is the future Mike Myers, Kevin Ool, a 24 year old lefty relief specialist; the other is Carlos de la Cruz, a 20 year old switch hitting outfielder with power and a Roger Cedeno-like BB:K ratio (21:55 in 237 AB at class A in 2004). Good job, Walt! Cruz is only going to get better and Ool has a great name for a potential LOOGY.

Also noticed that Cruz is listed at only 160 lbs. Only going to get quite a bit better…

As correct as I was that Kevin Ool has a great name, so was Derrick in pointing out how he tore it up in single-A ball last season, Ool’s promotion to AA brought some difficulty. His WHIP almost doubled, in fact. Strangely, our Carlos De La Cruz has no entry at the Baseball Cube and I don’t see him on any of our minor league affililates websites. Although the Sox Prospects website has his 2005 stats here.

Skip Schumaker and Bronson Arroyo both hit their first homers today in the big leagues. The Cardinals are now 2-0 on the season with the 4-3 win over the Phillies. The Reds, led by Arroyo, beat the Cubs 8-6 to even their series.

Through two games, the Royals lineup has drawn one walk, struck out twenty times, and been outscored 17-4. No wonder that of the seven stories linked tonight from their official website, six are about a voter referendum that will pay for stadium renovations. The Cardinals, being a baseball team, have only one story about their brand-new stadium which was christened last night with the AA Cardinals beating up on the AAA Redbirds. If anything, that goes to show you how meaningless a one-game series is–if Korea’s loss to Japan in the WBC semifinals didn’t already do that.

I’ve already got tickets for three friends from Georgia, one other as-yet undisclosed lucky individual, and myself to go see the series in St. Louis against the Atlanta Braves on July 17th, 18th, and 19th. Last night, a brilliant idea came to me and all the pieces appear to have fallen into place nicely. Here’s the plan:

Friday, July 14th: Leave East-Central Illinois and head for Southwest Missouri. Pitch a tent at a campground somewhere near Springfield, MO. I’ll ask around with my ol’ pal Dave and my little sister’s husband about where’s a good place for this. I’m looking at these guys, though. Hilarious website.
Saturday, July 15th: Wake up and float on a river. Grill some pork steaks and sit around a campfire.
Sunday, July 16th: Pack up campsite, grab a shower, and head to Springfield, MO to watch the Cardinals AA affiliate play the the Seattle Mariners’ AA affiliate, the San Antonio Missions, (their system’s top prospect is catching for the AA team this year) at beautiful Hammons Field. After the game, head to St. Louis and get ready for three days of great baseball and visits to the zoo and museums.

Sounds pretty awesome, don’t it?

My brother sent me an email with something I hadn’t thought of:

On Wednesday, at two minutes and three seconds after 1 AM, the time and date will be:

01:02:03 04/05/06

This won’t happen again for 100 years.

(You may now return to your normal life.)

It turns out that tonight’s AAA Memphis Redbirds vs. AA Springfield Cardinals exhibition game is being shown on Fox Sports Midwest and free over the internet. The starting pitchers are Sidney Ponson for Springfield and Dennis Tankersley for Memphis, a local fella who’s been pretty effective back and forth between AAA and Memphis the last three seasons.

This’ll be our first chance to watch a ballgame at the new Stadium, so I’ll be viewing it on the boob tube.

The Cardinals began their 2006 campaign yesterday and now today the dogwoods have started to flower. Another week or so and my magnolia tree will start to burst with flowers. And that’s one of my favorite days of the year. I’ll post some pictures when it happens. I put down some grass seed in the front yard the other day before the rains came, but I think the wind and birds might have gotten to it before the rain had a chance to bury it. I’ve got a little flowerbed in front of my house that I set up every Spring. The Mom’s Day Flower Show is this weekend, and I figure I’ll buy some plants there. I’ve gotten the bed established well enough (assuming the fountain grass comes back) that there are only a few plants that I need to put in each Spring at this point.

Here’s a picture of it the first season I put a bed in there:

It looked amazing by June, but they were annuals that stopped flowering late that month, and I swapped everything out. Fortunately, I had a line on free high-quality plants at the time.

In the back, I’ll be planting hot peppers, cherry tomatoes, some onions, string beans, and snow peas. Here’s what my garden there looks like once I put it in.

I’m definitely gonna track down the Tobasco peppers I had a few years back, and some habaneros, even though there’s not much harvest from them this far North.

Oh yeah: I should have noted that when I saw the Dogwoods in bloom, I was coming back from the library, having picked up a Department of the Army operator’s manual for a John Deere Loader/Backhoe model 410 and Mark Steedman’s first book. You can walk out with stuff like that when your library is the largest of any public university in the world (although the University of Toronto is gaining fast!) I was also happy to see that someone had checked out Steedman’s newer book, suggesting someone else is boning up on CCG as well. I didn’t notice anyone else looking to teach themselves how to drive a backhoe, though.

Ryan VB notes at Cardinals Diaspora that the storm that whooped and hollered through our neck of the woods last night will be a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ through Philadephia, PA today. Gametime is at 1pm EST, and weather.com puts the likelihood of rain during gametime at 20%. The game’s being carried by the local WB network, and I should be able to knock out enough work between now and 2:30 to sneak out early to watch the game at home.

Update: Dang blast! Work gets in the way of my good times.

Update via Gameday: Dude! Aaron Miles is gonna hit for the cycle today! Pujols is 2-2 with two homers. Rolen was apparently hiding his power in ST and jacked a grand slam to punish the Phillies for intentionally walking Edmonds to load the bases. This is some good baseball. Hopefully I can get outta here with time to watch the last inning or so. Not that I’m praying for a rain delay or anything.

Tornado sirens just went off. One was spotted about three miles southwest of Champaign, heading this way. The sky just went from blue to black in about a minute. Lights are flickering a bit. Pretty spooky. Better shut down the ‘puters.

After the storm: Wowee, that was the most violent storm I’ve seen in a long time. They were reporting 70+ mph gusts at the airport. At one point, I thought my neighbor’s gigantic pine tree was going to fall over onto my house. Insane lightning. No damage done to my place, although there’s a tree down in the empty lot across the street. I heard that the roof blew off a bar in downtown Champaign. At one point, I thought I was going to have to hide out in the basement. Crazy. The season opening game between the White Sox and Cleveland in Chicago was rain delayed for three hours. Tragically, two people were killed in St. Louis by this storm. I was watching the local NBC channel during the storm. They were doing a good job covering things. There’s no mention of that bar losing its roof, although a carwash a few blocks away from my crib had its roof torn off, they say.

Totally unrelated, but Junior Spivey won’t be on the opening day roster, and Hector Luna will be. I’d like to pat myself on the back by pointing to a post on March 21st in which I predicted that Spivey would start the season off the roster and in extended spring training. Apparently his shoulder isn’t hurt badly enough to put him on the DL, so he’ll need to accept an assignment to the minor leagues, which would expose him to a waiver claim.