Southern Times, Girls and Sports

With a little over a month to go, the Cardinals, like it or not, are within arms’ reach of catching the Milwaukee Brewers for the Wild Card lead.

And while the Brewers have been playing great baseball as of late, the Cardinals have been lying in the weeds and losing to the perennial losers that is the Pittsburgh Pirates, which is in St. Louis for a three-game series that started last night.

What needs to happen with the Cardinals in these waning weeks is that they need to manufacture runs when they need it the most. Instead of relying on power from the middle of the lineup, each player from here on out needs to understand their role if they want to continue playing in October for the fifth time in seven years.

Another thing would be finishing the drill in the top of the 9th inning. In case if you haven’t noticed, the Cardinals are among the league leaders in blown saves with the woebegone Washington Senators and in order to make the playoffs, the Cardinals need to, and this is being blunt and direct, stop breaking the fans’ heart.

Or else they’ll be like the Yankees these days.

• 17 suspensions are handed down by the Midwest League for the brawl that ensued between the Dayton Dragons and the Peoria Chiefs. Most notably, Juilo Castillo was slapped with a 60-game suspension, one of the longest in minor league history
• Redbirds get another win on the road last night as they beat Fresno 5-4, while in Des Moines, the Iowa Cubs kept their lead in the PCL American Northern Division at four games by beating the Colorado Springs Sky Sox at Principal Park. The Redbirds will head to Sacramento beginning Sunday while Iowa will play host to Salt Lake.
• In my opinion, isn’t it weird to have Manny Ramirez wearing Dodger blue and Ken Griffey wearing White Sox colors and Pudge wearing Yankee pinstripes? Which one of those three will be playing come October?
• Note to Tony LaRussa: Start Kyle Lohse at night exclusively. He’s lights out after dark. The same can’t be said about some people’s phone services after 9.

For the last seven and a half years, I’ve watched the paint rust on summer at the corner of South Third and Union as the Redbirds bred some of the stars you see today in St. Louis and bullshitted on the field as far as their record was concerned.

While I know that sounds like sour grapes, the Redbirds hadn’t played too many meaningful games in the month of September, let the month of August since Albert Pujols hit a game-winning blast to win the city’s first baseball championship since 1990 back in 2000.

Save for 2005, when the Redbirds, Omaha, and Nashville were fighting for the pennant, only to be sideswiped by Hurricane Katrina, the Redbirds haven’t been anywhere close to being pennant contenders.

Until now.

At the end of Sunday, the Redbirds are in first place by a single game over the Iowa Cubs in the American Northern Division, giving me a chance to relish a rare pennant race in Memphis over the summer break.

Yeah I know, 22-22 isn’t something to throw a parade about, but for the shit I’ve had to watch for the last seven years, maybe it’s not that early to think about the postseason.

Then again, we have three months to go in the season.

According to published reports from FoxSports.com and the Belleville News-Democrat, in a matter of days Scott Rolen could trade the Arch for the CN Tower as the Cardinals and Blue Jays have agreed on terms to send Rolen to Toronto in exchange for Troy Glaus.

While I’ve been hollering for a month and a half to the Cardinals organization in my columns on Scott Rolen as well as talking to other Cardinal fans (ran into one in Nashville yesterday), I still believe that sending Rolen to Toronto for a guy who hasn’t done much of anything since he won the World Series MVP in 2002 with Anaheim is a good and bad idea at the same time.

Good because Glaus is a guy who can provide pop in the lineup, preferably batting behind Pujols and Duncan.

Bad because Glaus has never been known for his glove, just his bat.

I thought for sure from what I saw around the majors last season, that if the Cardinals made a trade for Rolen, the third basemen that would be at the top of their list would be Josh Fields from the White Sox, Brandon Inge from the Tigers, or Casey Blake from the Indians-young guys who’ve had great seasons in 2006 and 2007.

A third baseman who can be an asset at the hot corner both offensively and defensively.

Hopefully, Glaus won’t play hot potato with the ball.

Then again, he might surprise us Cardinal fans.