Two articles from Dave Pinto’s Baseball Musings page caught my eye this morning:

One concerns Kerry Robinson’s hilarious misplays in the outfield during the Royals 3-2 loss to the White Sox. He misplayed a flyball so badly that I have a hard time believing it happened until I see video for myself. Apparently he climbed the wall to get at a flyball, thinking it a home run, but the ball landed on the warning track before bouncing over the wall for a ground-rule double. Pinto closes the post by asking, “He doesn’t get on base, he doesn’t hit for power, he doesn’t catch the ball. Why is he in the majors?” Anyone who has read even an excerpt from Three Nights in August knows of that argument Kerry Robinson had with La Russa:

When La Russa tells Kerry Robinson that he will never be a starter, his harsh pronouncement seems tinged by a bit of delight. Robinson, then a backup outfielder, had a superstar’s strut and a conviction that he would excel if only the manager would wake up and insert him in the starting lineup. But La Russa felt Robinson’s skills were marginal and that his baseball instincts were lacking. If Robinson really believes he should be playing every day, he tells him, then he should demand a trade. “Go find somebody who’s going to give you the four or five hundred at bats,” La Russa tells him. “And I hope they’re in our division so we can play against you.”

I sorta liked Kerry Robinson, since he was a former hockey player who went pro as a baseball player (like Chris Carpenter). It showed once in a play he made in a rain soaked outfield when he stopped and slid backwards, snowploy style, to camp under a flyball. Unfortunately for KR, roster spots are too valuable to waste on a no obp, no slug, bad-weather defensive specialist though.

The other story from Baseball Musings was an update on Cubs RHP Kerry Wood, who struck out 12 while giving up one hit, a walk, and hitting a batter over five innings in a rehab start for the AAA Cubs. Kerry Wood had his offseason shoulder surgery performed by the Reds Medical Director Dr. Timothy Kremchek, who also did the work on Rolen’s should this offseason. Rolen’s shoulder feels better than it has in years, says Sco-Ro, so there’s every reason to expect Wood to come back as good as ever. Even when he was pitching injured out of the bullpen last season, he was mighty impressive. The Cubs problems this year go much deeper than subpar pitching, however. It’s still good to know that a very good pitcher will be back out there soon.

That was a fun weekend. The Cards swept the Marlins while Houston dropped three to the Rockies (who we’ll be playing next). Meanwhile, the Reds dropped two of three and so the Cards are up in second place, a game behind Cincinnati.

My father and stepmom came up this weekend to attend the medieval themed wedding of Cass’s sister and my shootin’ buddy Tim. They even honored me by crashing at my crib on Friday. The wedding was Saturday and naturally a blast. Unfortunately we missed the ceremony by a few minutes, but I heard it was lovely. The decorations the bride and groom had spent the last several months making were certainly impressive.

I woke up this morning with a hungover tapeworm that willed me to remain in bed watching discovery channel for a few hours longer than my own circumstances allowed. My back and glutes were still very sore from Friday’s softball practice on top of that so I was useless for today. I spent a solid hour stretching out my back and legs for tonight’s softball game. Unfortunately we lost 25-23. Batting exclusively left-handed, I had a decent game–going 2-3 at the plate (two singles and a flyout, all to right) and taking a good walk in the last inning. I thought the game would be over after the fifth with us up 17-12, our hour up, and our starters out of the game, but we played another inning for some reason. In the top, the other team scored thirteen runs to take a big lead. The other team took selective at-bats, walked a lot, and had some good hits. In the bottom of the inning with a runner on first, one out and a struggling batter up behind me, I figured that our cause would be served better by taking a walk and so decided to avoid swinging until I had a full count. The pitcher threw me one perfect strike that I felt dirty laying off of, but I got the walk to load the bases. (By rule in this co-rec league, if you walk a man-batter, the woman-batter on deck has the option to take first base). The next hitter laced a hit to the outfield that scored two runs, so the walk was good lawyer-ball strategy. The other team made some great defensive plays to get out of the inning and we weren’t able to complete the comeback, although we had the go-ahead run on base when the game ended. Defensively, I caught for an inning and then played in centerfield for the last three. Only one flyball came my way, but I was playing too shallow on the hitter to get to it. He’d popped out in the infield in all his at-bats to that point, and most of the batters on the other team weren’t hitting the ball in the air, so my defensing was mostly just running up and fielding grounders that made it out of the infield to keep runners from advancing. In the inning I caught, there weren’t any foul tips, pop-ups nearby, or plays at the plate, so I was just playing catch with the pitcher. I’ve never seen the team that we’re playing next weekend, but our play has improved each time we practice or play, so there’s a chance we might get our first win.

I stole this link from pcgd in the VeB comment thread speculating on moving Adam Wainwright (who Cardinals fans near and far all ♥) to the rotation, but apparently the Schaumburg Flyers of the Northern League traded a relief pitcher to their Golden League affiliate Fullerton for a pallet of Budweiser. I swear:

(Clicking the picture takes you to the Northern League transactions page from which that image was grabbed.)

That’s as funny as the Romanian soccer player who was traded for 33 pounds of meat recently.

It’s likely a clever, regionally directed publicity attempt by Anheuser-Busch to gain just a little bit of traction in the Chicago area. The player, Nigel Thatch, is also Leon from the Budweiser commercials. He had a 10.22 ERA over 12.1 IP for the Flyers; since going to Fullerton, he has yet to pitch in a game.

I ran into this article about a “grass-roots” campaign to get Al Gore nominated as the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate and saw that the dude behind the campaign is, as well as a friend of Gore’s, the “director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth And I’ll leave it at Development at Tufts University.” You’d think someone in the process would point out what a creepy, creepy name that is. Turns out the place really does exist, although its purpose is not as easy to find as its website. At least it’s a private school. And I’ll leave it at that.

(Hat tips in general direction of Daniel S.)

From the Onion’s archives, the obligatory Al-Gore-is-a-nutcase story.

Tonight’s lineup:

Eckstein    SSRodriguez   LFPujols      1BEdmonds     CFEncarnacion RFSpiezio     3BBennett      CLuna        2BMarquis      P

Nice lineup. The surprise might be Bennett starting for the first time when Soup wasn’t dishin’. Cardnilly points out that he’s 2-3 against Oswalt. Luna starting against the right-hander is a mild surprise. They’ve never faced off against each other, and Miles is 0-3 against him. Oswalt pitches pretty well no matter which side of the plate you’re stand on. Miles is 2-3 against Dan Wheeler, so if a situation comes up where you need a base hit against him, I’d expect Miles to come in. Being a switch-hitter, the Astros would be unlikely to change pitchers on him.

Wild game in Memphis this afternoon, with the Redbirds rocking the Zephyrs 17-4. Skip went 0-2 with two runs batted in by way of a bases loaded walk and a groundout to score Junior Spivey, who was on with a pinch-hit, 2-RBI triple. Rather distressing is that Larry Bigbie sat out the game after leaving last night’s game before the fourth inning. He’s played in nine games of the thirteen games for Memphis since starting his rehab on the 17th of April. In one of those games, he was the designated hitter. In his most recent game, he left after three innings. He’ll have three more opportunities to get work in before rejoining the Cardinals. [Update: No he won't... Bigbie reinjured his foot and was in St. Louis getting checked out by Paletta last night.]

One more note about that game… Rumors are swirling that Ricardo Rincon is hurt pretty bad and that he’d been hiding his injury from the Cardinals. It behooves the Cardinals to get another lefthanded reliever on the roster to backup Randy Flores, and that lefty would most likely be Ty Johnson, who until today had pitched four ineffective innings. Sure enough, Tyler Johnson worked two innings today giving up only one hit, no walks, and no runs, while striking out three.

I’ve been worrying lately about whether Larry Bigbie’s injury is healed or not. He took two games off in a row last week and played as DH at least once in his rehab assignment, which will end this Sunday, I believe. He’s 5 for 28 at the plate with no extra base hits and four walks against twelve strikeouts. He left tonight’s game after grounding into a double play to end the third inning and was replaced by Skip Schumaker. Skip got himself off to a good start in besting his 2004 numbers (briefly discussed this morning) as he went 3-3 with a walk, a double, and a walk-off 2-RBI single. Anthony Reyes had a good game, striking out 8 in six innings. Junior Spivey went 0-6 with an error.

Unrelated, but C-Bot sent me an article describing an injury suffered by Kerry Robinson that’s even more unbelievable than Sammy Sosa’s sneezing injury. Hopefully Kerry doesn’t end up on the DL like Sosa did–he’s having quite a solid season.

Stopped in at the office to talk to my colleagues and picked up a Chiga grammar at the library that shed some light on one of the more unusual phenomena that my paper covers. The illumination is somewhat confusing though. As far as I can tell, both of these distantly related languages borrowed the same function word from some other language at some point in the fairly recent past. It’s a strange thing.

After those errands, I figured I’d go grab some plants and do some yardwork while procrastinating taking a break from paper-writing. I put in the new bed up front, installing a miscanthus graziella and two calamagrostis overdam to replace the three purple fountain grass plants that weren’t surviving the winters here. I tried something risky up there as well, putting in my favorite plant, stachys byzantina. I’ll have to keep an eye on that to make sure it doesn’t take over the bed. I bought a bunch of pepper plants as well, but when I was preparing the vegetable garden, I noticed a large number of white grubs and ants living in the soil. A dusting of Sevin should get them all started on the road to insect hell. I’ll probably be up all night working on this paper, so when the sun comes up I’ll take another break and put in the peppers, peas, and beans. I’ll post some pictures of this stuff in a few days once they settle in.

The lawnmower sure runs nice ever since I cleaned out the carb. Now I just desperately need to get a wood chipper over to my crib so I can grind up the massive pile of pruned branches on the back patio. Then it won’t (so obviously) look like a lazy hillbilly lives here. I asked if they had a man-portable machine to rent at the local place, but their smallest chipper needs to be towed.

I finished up all my work in the office last night, so should be able to stay home most of today and write up a paper on Logooli quantificational determiners that’s due tomorrow, finish up some code for a big project at work, and mow my lawn after this Cards vs. Reds game is over. Holy smokes! Juan Encarnacion, a.k.a Instant Breakout, just hit his fourth home run of the season–his third in the last three games. Skip Schumaker was sent down to AAA this morning in exchange for Brian Falkenborg, the big right-handed closer who’s been pitching so well for Memphis (0.82 ERA, 1:15 BB:K, 1 HR) and in Spring Training (2.70 ERA, 1:6 BB:K, 0 HR). That’s for the best–Schumaker wasn’t getting enough playing time although I think he has enough ability and got enough advice from the likes of Jim Edmonds and company in this cup of coffee that he should do very well playing center for the Redbirds and have a breakout season of sorts there. This will be his second year in AAA, and if he can put up numbers similar to–if not better than–his 2004 numbers in his second year facing AA pitching, he’ll have a legitimate shot at spending all of next season on the big league roster, either starting in left or playing So Taguchi’s role of primo defensive sub.

Today’s roster’s a fairly strange one. Pujols gets a well deserved day off to rest his back. Scott Spiezio is taking his place, with Luna in at third. I’d be interested to know if they considered playing Edmonds or Bennett at first today. Scott Spiezio’s bat and glove have been surprisingly good filling in for Rolen recently, but today would have been a good opportunity to give Edmonds’ knees a day off without taking his bat out of the lineup. Both are getting a break instead, although it would surprise me not a bit if Edmonds came in to play first base in a double switch.

Eckstein    SSGall        LFLuna        3BEncarnacion RFSpiezio     1BTaguchi     CFMolina       CMiles       2BPonson       P

Up 2-0 in the bottom of the fourth, currently. Back to writin’.

Update: Jimmy Ballgame pinch-hits in the top of the seventh, comes in as part of a double switch in the bottom of the inning at first base. Spiezio moves over to third. He’s using his centerfielder’s glove there and made a stretching PO.

Bottom of the eighth: A double switch with two outs brought in Brian Falkenborg for his first MLB appearance of the season. So Taguchi is relieved by Edmonds, Rodriguez came in to play left, and John Gall takes over at first. Falkenborg ends the inning without any IP recorded, as Molina guns down Edwin Encarnacion attempting to steal second. The score’s still tied 2-2, so he may come pitch into the ninth.

Game Over, Man: They aren’t taking Brian Falkenborg’s first loss very well at VeB. It’s a shame he couldn’t get it done. John Gall didn’t look too comfortable at the plate today, especially in that last at-bat. Pittsburgh’s beating the Cubs 4-0 right now in the fifth. The Astros are taking on Ben Sheets tonight before we get our mitts on them tomorrow and Thursday to hopefully sweep the two game series to stay even after dropping these two to the Reds.

I just found something pretty exciting that will likely guarantee my paper is interesting. Gotta run in to work for a bit and grab a book from the library to make sure, though. The Tuesday Law and Order marathon has already begun. I wonder if that has something to do with the stinkin’ NBA playoffs being on TNT at night.

When the local cable company switched over from Fox Sports Chicago to Fox Sports Midwest there was much rejoicing among local Cardinal fans. I’m guessing that the local radio affiliate in the Cardinals Radio Network, WDWS 1400, must have experienced a ratings drop relative to last year, since more people would be watching the game on tv instead of listening on the radio. Since the television signal is delayed about second or two beyond the live radio feed, you can’t really listen to both without spoiling the action. It would be a shame if they dropped their membership in the network next season due to flagging ratings. Fortunately, WDWS has Ed Bonds, a bright engineer at WDWS–who necessarily is also a Cardinals fan. During the playoffs last year with the awful FOX playcalling, he had mercifully rigged up a system for delaying the network audio signal to sync the local radio broadcast with the cable television signal. Dave Loane refers to it mysteriously as the gadget. In any case, Ed’s rigging the gadget up to sync the radio and tv for every game on FSN, at least. The only wrinkle is that the digital cable box adds another second and a half of delay, so in the living room I have to put up with Dan and Al (who I don’t really mind all that much).

Cards lost tonight 6-1. All six runs scored by the Reds were charged to Guacamulder, whose ERA will take a hit from this subpar 5 IP night. He’s having some trouble notching his 100th win. Nothing to get upset about. The Reds were hitting the ball well and finding holes. If we can take two of the next three, we’re riding the same high as yesterday and opening a three game series against the Marlins.

And this, from the first comment in Bellyscratcher’s smack-talk thread from tonight, is cruel and hilarious.

If you didn’t already know, the native interface to the Windows mixer is a useless little program called sndvol32.exe that doesn’t have any sort of a functional command-line interface. Fortunately, Philip Donner at the International Center for Chamber Music developed a very nice tool for manipulating the mixer–most importantly, it allows mixer settings to be loaded from plaintext files. This allows me to easily guarantee that the mixer settings are set appropriately before an application is run.

Cards game has started. After 2 1/2, the game’s tied at 1. Things are looking very good for the Cardinals offense with Encarnacion starting to find his stroke to all fields and Miles emerging as an on-base machine. He walked twice yesterday and again in his first plate appearance today for 12 on the young season, already more than the 8(!) walks he had all last year in 324 at-bats. I think he likes batting 8th in the order. Rodriguez is in the 2-hole today, and I wonder if that might be a platoon pattern that we’ll see a lot of this season… Against lefties, you bat Luna second and Taguchi 8th–against right-handers you have Rodriguez (or Bigbie) bat second and Miles 8th. This should be a good game.

A few links to amuse youse:

A photo gallery of a party held for Jim Edmonds recently. I’m pretty sure there’s a picture of Juan Encarnacion smiling in one of them while talking to a very attractive waitress holding a bottle of vodka. I understand that pictures of a smiling Juan are hard to find.

Here’s a picture of Scott Spiezio and a dude that went to my grade school along with their wives.

This is pretty funny.

This is really funny. (It’s for a good cause.)