This will probably get lost in here pretty quickly, but probably not worth its own thread.

The Mimi Fishman Foundation is having a charity auction and the Cardinals donated a sweet package. Four reserved tickets, passes for the field before the game including being on-field for batting practice, and a seat from the old Busch signed by Gibson, Musial, Brock, Schoendienst, and Ozzie. So far only bid is for $450, well worth it if you have the money to spend IMO. Unfortunately, I do not.

http://www.mimifishman.org/auctions/viewitem.asp?ID=892

!@#$ me.

Brad Penny looks absolutely filthy right now.

He just threw the best Cardinal fastball I've seen since Morris' first year back from TJ surgery.

96 mph, explosive tailing action in on the righthanded hitter (Pence). Pence started his swing around when the ball was caught. 2 pitches later he threw a wicked splitter at 89 mph that Pence couldn't have hit with a tennis racket.

Pence was an All-Star last season and had absolutely no chance in that AB.

Well that decision didn't pay off.

I would rather have seen Penny try to hold a one run lead than this bullpen.

C'mon Big Sweat.

NICE PLAY, BOOG!!

Gotta pull him there.

If you manage with the idea that your guys will fail, you're not going to win too many games.

If anyone involved does there job from that point forward (i.e. Stav hits a deep fly ball or grounds to the right side of the IF, McClellan/Reyes/Franklin hold the Astros down), you win and do so without pushing Penny.

Penny looked great, but he's still a fatbody with a high effort delivery and a fairly extensive injury history.

It didn't work out, but I think it was absolutely the right move.

I can respect that, but he's been nails tonight and hadn't thrown 90 pitches.

JMO.

Sure would be nice if we could get Penny some RUN SUPPORT.

Two goddamn runs against the Asstros? :shake:

There is nothing better than facing a batter who swings at the first pitch.

No shit.

Winner winner chicken dinner.

Yeah, but a pinch hitter against Franklin - it's the right move.

Franklin lives off first pitch strikes. He made his bones last year by throwing a get-ahead strike and then attacking hitters from ahead in the count.

As the season progressed, guys realized what Franklin was doing and that he didn't have the raw stuff to overpower them with that first pitch strike.

And pinch hitters need to go up there attacking, IMO. They don't have their eye in place, they're not terribly likely to draw a walk anyway.

Combine Franklin's tendencies with the fact that a pinch hitter was up there and if I'm managing the Astros, I'm pissed if the guy's not first-pitch swinging.

Yeah, but your opinion is different than mine and therefore wrong.

Sorry, I don't make the rules.

The difference is that Franklin is still a spot nibbler, and as such, you aren't going to get "meat".

His decline meshed perfectly with the normalization of his BABIP.

We're going to have to change your name to Dane's Left Nut. LMAO

That's why you swing at the first pitch.

He's a nibbler when he's ahead in the count. However, watch him pitch - his first pitch is rarely a good one on the black. He generally comes to the strike zone until he gets ahead in the count.

Once he gets you to 0-1, you're going to have to hit his pitch. When he's ahead in the count, he will nibble you to death. However, on his first pitch, you'll get something tasty to swing at until he makes an adjustment to the hitters.

The way to get to Ryan Franklin is to swing early.

They found a way to get it done. Taking care of business. Get the sweep tommorrow.

Somewhere in that great Busch Stadium in the sky Jack Buck was calling him out on that. I smiled a bit last night when the TV annoncers made the same observation.

Who is BOOG and the Big Sweat :shrug:

I spent many a summer night as a youth listening to Jack Buck and Harey Carey call a Cardinals game.:thumb:

:thumb:

Same here...I'm afraid with the advent of Direct TV and the FSM channels, the young of today will not be able to grow up with the pictures in our minds
like we were able to with Jack Buck. He's in the hall of Fame for a reason.

Same here. It was not unusual for me to go to sleep, with a transistor radio under my pillow, listening to the Cardinals when they were playing on the west coast.

He's got the job done. Yeah, it was the Astros but its something positive. It's in our best interests to have him succeed.

From STLtoday:

Franklin got the official save but Reyes got the biggest out after he had walked Michael Bourn to load the bases. Pitching coach Dave Duncan had said something the other day about Reyes' modus operandi. Duncan said: "When he has to throw a strike, he generally does. He doesn't like to throw too many before that."

I'm sure there were millions of us doing that same thing in multiple states. Nice to have the same shared experiences with fellow fans in places you never heard of or been to as a kid. :thumb:

I have to say I never heard Jack and Harry enough to make a comment but listening to Jack play the straight man to a drunken Mike Shannon was always entertaining.

Looks like we're about to get beat by ****ing Houston.

How embarrassing. :shake:

Boggs can kiss my ass

True enough, but honestly, if you can only score one goddamn run against the Asstros at home you deserve to lose.

Boy, Holliday's been stinking it up since they got back to St. Louis. He's like 0-forever. :shake:

3 series, 3 closing game losses. I'm telling you, LaRussa doesn't give a **** about the sweep.

Are you implying that he tells his players not to hit?

I'm implying that the intensity level isn't there for the third game when they've won the first two.

Do you really think they wanted to be the "1" in Houston's 1-8?

3 runs in the last two games against Houston, that's ****in sad.

That may be but you can't argue with the results of the Tony managed teams. They almost always overperform for their talent level. The manager has to be a major reason for that.

It's not Tony's fault that Pujols and Holliday looked like chit in the batters box.

Uh, Albert went 2-4 with two doubles. You really can't pin this turd on him.

Which means you can pin it on Holliday. How many times did he strike out, or pop out with runners on this series? It was ridiculous.

He should come out of it though.

I was talking about the strikeouts where they looked bad. Pujols can strike out 50% of the time and commit 3 errors a game and he would still be a productive member of the team. My point was that if you can do that you are doing something right as a pitcher.

We have 162 games to get on track. I'm not concerned about making the playoffs but this team needs to clicking on all cyclinders come playoff time. Having a couple of games where the bats go silent isn't good but tolerable as long as its not happening alot come September.

Crazy game. Carp struggles through 7 but gets the win with no earned runs and Lopez wins it with a slam!

Win ugly but win! If you can win the ugly ones you have something going good.

Santana tomorrow vs Wainwright. Should be great.

Franklin was shaky again. :shake:

Yea but he closed it. I think he went to the Izzy school of closing games. If it ain't close it ain't a save.

I still wonder if he will be replaced before the year is up.

We suffered for a year and a half with IZZY before Waino saved us and won us a World Series. I hope it doesn't take that long with Franklin.

Yea I wonder if the next Waino is McClellan. McClellan obviously doesn't have the stiff Waino had but I think he may be the next closer.

It was really only 2006 when Izzy was definitely pitching hurt. Then again in 2008 where his hip gave out a second time. Hopefully Franklin will not have quite as long of a leash since he never had close to the ability Izzy had when he was in his prime.

Game still on fox, as its the top of the 13th inning. 0-0 the score.
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:shake:

This game is nuts. The Cards offense has went completely away this home stand.

Near 5 hours now.
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And we go to the 15th inning.
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Runners at 2nd and 3rd with NO OUTS and they can't score ONE MOTHER****ING RUN???????????

:cuss:

This game will feature more scoreless innings thrown by relief pitchers than the Royals will enjoy by the All-Star break.

Both teams should be given a loss at this point.

You know it's a bad sign when the 7 pm games are getting over before the afternoon game of the week is over.

I've been hungover all day.

What the **** is going on here?

This McGwire as hitting coach thing seems to be going well. :banghead:

This game will be over by the next inning. I just tuned in.

When I was in school, we were playing cards at a friends house. Had the KSU Baseball game on the radio. Went to extra innings and kept going. Got to the 21st inning and we decided to head over to the stadium. It's after midnight and he lived out by the stadium complex. Game was over within 10 minutes.

There are going to be very upset Cops viewers.
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Holy ****. Awesome pitch by the Hawk, and Jimenez, who is on my FBB team, has a no hitter through 8.

Correction, it was 20 innings. Vs. #1 UT Gave up 5 runs in the top of the 20th. I think we brought some bad mojo or something.

That was an awful AB.

This is ****ing ridiculous.

What's with all the empty seats? I thought STL was a baseball town?

Jimenez now 1 out away from the no-no. Brian McCann up to the plate.

And he got him. First no hitter in Rockies history.

I'm assuming Waino has already pinch hit in this game?

And first no hitter in Hamas fantasy baseball history.

Jimenez with the no-hitter.

Sad part was, Olivo was the catcher for the Rockies tonight.

ROFL

And the Cardinals with some Royals-like baserunning skills there.

What in the god mother ****

:facepalm:

What happened? I'm on ****ing gamecast here.

JFC what the hell is going on. It's like neither team wants to score. Dumb shit.

fraz,

Ludwick ran through a stop sign on a double play ball. Mets turned it to second then fired it home to hose Ludwick in a run down.

Ultimately, I think they had Anderson at first anyway, but it was still dumb as ****.

Cardinal tries to score from 2nd on a ground ball to short.

Ludwick just ran into an out between 3rd and home instead of stopping at 3rd with 2 outs and Yadi on deck.

Mets try to turn a DP, runner does a good job taking out the defender at 2nd, no DP... but then Ludwick tries to get greedy and score from 3rd for the win... but the Mets recover and throw it home well in time. Not even close, Ludwick went running back toward 3rd.

I'm off to the bar. **** these morons. Everybody who played tonight and didn't pitch should give their ****ing game checks to charity. 4321

Franklin giving up a 6 run explosion is really the only way for this to end.

Absolutely reeruned to dive for that ball.

I'm not sure he caught that.