Roy Fucking Halladay. As much as I'd love to write an article about how much I wish he was wearing a Cardinal uni yesterday (or Cliff Lee, who was excellent against Tampa...or Roy Oswalt, who goes for Philly in game two), it would really be beating a dead horse at this point.

Instead, we'll talk about what Orlando Cabrera had to say about Halladay's no-hit/one walk/eight K shutout performance:

Must...resist...little bitches...reference...

There are two ways to handle O-Crab's thoughts - 1) say "Shut the fuck up." 2) Orrrr, you could use facts (drumroll...graphs and charts!) to prove him wrong. From here on out, whenever you come across anyone who has anything to do with the Reds and/or Cincinnati, and can call them out for being dumb, you take the opportunity to do so.

Check out the PitchFX data from Brooks Baseball:

I know it's a little hard to decipher at first glance, but it charts all of Halladay's pitches in relation to the strike zone, and describes the result of each pitch by the color of the box. Okay, you're not five years old, I'll get to the point.

As you can see, the only called strike outside of the zone is the light red box to the right, around the 2.2 foot high mark. If anything, the umpire was more wrong than right - I count four green boxes inside the strike zone that should have been called a strike, with a few more near the border. So Orlando Cabrera was wrong to complain about the umpire? Man, I am absolutely shocked.

I hope you end up looking like the coolest nerd in your office today. Stop by my mom's basement if you want to hang out; it's lonely down here sometimes.

Here's a story from the campus of New Mexico State in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Maybe we should consider blanketing ballpark village with a similar message in 2011. 

LINK HERE

I probably shouldn’t be writing this for a couple of reasons.

1.  I don’t need you taking my easy money. It’s almost unfathomable how much these people will pay you to sit in a room for 60-90 minutes and unload on their products.

2.  I’m sure it’s unethical on some level to get in on a study group and then talk about what everyone else said. But I didn’t sign anything, so screw it.

Let me back up…

A couple of weeks ago a marketing research company here in St. Louis called me up. If you’re not familiar with these places, it’s basically a phone call telling you that you’ve got free money waiting to get picked up. They’ll ask you about 10 questions ranging from your living situation to your salary and you answer them. If you qualify, you come in after work and make about 75 bucks to talk about what you like/dislike about Thing X with a moderator and usually 6-8 other people.

They hand you a real check after you leave and all you need is a first name.

No forms, no complicated procedures. Show up, talk about Thing X and leave with the check. That’s it. That’s the gig.

Again, I shouldn’t be telling you this, since the more people that do this, the fewer studies I’ll have the chance to do… but whatever- this one is worth sharing.

So in the past I’ve personally done these for stuff like new TV shows, razors and chicken pot pies. They’re easy and fun, but not anything I’m really passionate about. Which makes sense. I shave, but I’m not passionate about razors. If Gillette can figure out a way to move my needle and get me even a little excited about a razor? We’ll I’ll probably buy Gillette. Get enough guys like me and all of a sudden these focus groups pay off.

So when the company called and came right off the top with “Who do you think the NL MVP should be?” I knew that this was going to be a study I wanted to be in on.

I gave sufficient answers and they booked me for last night.

All the guys in this particular study were 28-35 year old males that loved baseball. I would describe the 9 other guys as 7 pretty pure (get rid of the DH etc) hardliners and 3 fairly progressive (pitch clock wouldn’t be that bad) moderates. Everyone seemed to have a girlfriend and a dog. One guy plugged Viva El Birdos and another accidentally gave the URL where he steals MLB games online.

That was actually pretty awkward for everyone. Anyway…

In no particular order, here are the things we learned:

+ MLB is really interested in metal bats for the Home Run Derby. This was brought up at least twice separately for discussion by the moderator and mentioned a third time in passing. In the room, even the purists were OK with tinkering with the HR Derby and didn’t feel like it would be sacrilegious to change the format of the thing completely.

VERDICT? I don’t know how they do this with people in the OF stands… but I sure as hell was vocal in supporting seeing what these guys could do with the pipes.

Click 'Read More' for the rest of the story...

It's that time of year again - Tony LaRussa will once again decide if he's coming back to the Cardinals...uh, once again. It's our own small-scale Midwest version of "The Decision," only it would probably be hosted by Katie Felts with "Sundeh is GAME DAYYY-EAH!" in the background, and constant cuts to the wrong camera.

So we'll all sit patiently for a while before seeing what the future holds for the 2011 Cardinals. And it would be business as usual, except for the fact that in last Friday's STL Today column, Rick Hummel tried to slip a juicy little nugget by everyone with this subtle sentence:

La Russa said he planned to drive home to his home in northern California later in the week.

No charter flight, no jet. Not even first class on American. ROAD TRIP?! What the hell could Tony LaRussa possibly do on a one-man road trip?

I hope you know where this is going...

MS Paint-ville!

First we see Bill DeWitt, Big Mac and John Mozeliak say goodbye to the skipper. Hopefully Tony signed their yearbooks before he sped off in his '86 Camaro:

Click 'Read More' for the rest of the story...

Most professional sports teams have some pretty smart people in their marketing department. Generally these people love the teams they work for and bust their ass to make their teams look as good as humanly possible even in tough times.

The St. Louis Cardinals ended one of the most disappointing seasons in recent memory on Sunday afternoon, failing to make the playoffs for the third time in four years.

In each of those 4 years, the team has drawn over 3 million loyal, paying patrons to Busch Stadium to shower this team with as much unconditional love as you’ll see in professional sport. Much to my chagrin, Cardinal fans, more than any other I can think of, are really naïve to what the Cardinals think of them.

Case in point, this e-mail I received early this morning:

Mind you, we’re not 12 hours removed from the end of the 2010 MLB regular season. We’re all a bit sad on some level that the Cardinals played so feebly. We’ve decided to move past the disappointment and start looking ahead to the playoffs or even the start of off-season changes to the club.

The Cardinals?

They’re looking for ways to get in your wallet.

No thanks. No apologies for not playing to potential. No exciting plans for the future.

NOOOOOOO.

They want you to book your fucking Christmas party at the ballpark. For a really reasonable fee, of course.

It’s moments like this when I want to just slap this in the face of every single Cardinal fan. But it’s no matter, they’ll shrug it off and think to themselves how cool it would be to have their lame holiday cocktails right next to where Flip Lopez quit.

Cardinals marketing department – we get it, you’re charged with making the team $$$. Do work.

But know that there are, contrary to what you believe, some actual real live thinking fans out there. And we’re not particularly pleased with 2010. So why don’t you take a week or so and let this thing breath before trying to make up for lost revenue not gained by playing in October.

Better yet, hire some cheaper, smarter labor and get some players that want to, you know, win.

What’s left to Say about the Cardinals? They’ve got this weekend and then the season is over. Not metaphorically like it was in July, August or September. But literally over, as in no more games at all.

That sucks.

I always hate when the season ends. Sure, we won’t have these lowly birds to kick around anymore… but  punishing them for their bad deeds was like a little daily ritual that I’m not ready to give up.

But I guess we’ll have to.

Some reading that’s not short form:

I re-purposed my article yesterday and put it up on InsideSTL today. If you’d do me a favor and click on over there so they can sell some more advertising and afford to keep me next season, I’d appreciate it. Hell, they’re probably hot chicks ready to break up your marriage hanging out over there too. LINK HERE

This is absolutely insane. In a nutshell, this chick from Duke decided to make a record of every dude she banged in college, then turn in a senior thesis on how these guys measured up in areas like ‘hitting on her’, ‘size’ and a number of other areas. I can’t believe that this is real, but the internet has pretty much verified that it is indeed real.  Just an amazing read. LINK HERE

I wrote for SB Nation STL this week and got us updated on our ‘problem child’ AKA The St. Louis Rams. Believe it or not, they win this Sunday and they have a claim to first place in the NFC West. FIRST place. I’m still a bit uncomfortable even saying it out loud. LINK HERE

Now, The Friday Links…

• The 'Product Training Institute' suveys models. LINK HERE (HT: JRH)
• The human Transformer is pretty cool. LINK HERE (HT: JRH)
• Oh, Christ's Sake. LINK HERE
• 15 unusally sexually charged photos in ordinary life. LINK HERE (SFW)
• Boston Legal never came up with dialoge this good. LINK HERE
• Now that's a creative business card. LINK HERE
• What is this guy doing in there? Would you be frightened to be on his flight? LINK HERE

That's all I've got for the week. If you're at Taste of St. Louis this Saturday, come by the beer tent nearest to the mainstage and I'll make sure to fill you up as high as the cup will let me.

The 2010 Cardinals season was officially declared dead at approximately 9:30p CST Tuesday evening when Cincinnati Reds outfielder Jay Bruce crushed a walk-off HR to send his team into the postseason and exterminating the ‘magic number’ that had been in single digits for nearly two weeks.

Most Cardinal fans had been resided to this fate for weeks. The Birds had the tenacity of a monk on peyote. It was only a formality before the games didn’t matter.

Disappointment.

It seems to be the pre-eminent word used to describe the 2010 Cardinals campaign. Disappointment in the outcome. Disappointment in the injuries. Disappointment in LaRussa.

Fucking disappointing.

But what specifically were the 5 most disappointing things about the Cardinals? Perhaps this is like trying to determine the most gruesome ‘Faces of Death’ video or the hottest Victoria Secret model- but it’s worth taking a stab at.

Disappointment 1:  Albert Pujols is going to finish the season .310/42ish/120ish and lose to Joey Votto for the MVP award, but still get some serious vote backing. For whatever reason, Dan and Al keep referencing this cryptic ‘some people think he’s having a down year’ bullshit every telecast when no one has really said anything of the sort for 5 months… but as you can clearly see- 2010 wasn’t a down year for AP. It was another monster fucking year for AP.

Monster.

Don’t get spoiled by his greatness. You put this guy in any other city and people are literally creaming themselves with his 2010 stat line. When he goes away, I truly will have nothing but empathy for the next 1B player to wear the Cardinals uniform.

But in 3 of the past 4 seasons, where AP is in the prime of his prime… the Cardinals have shit themselves and not made the postseason. The possibility that the Cardinals win only one World Series with the greatest player of a generation is so disheartening that it makes you question pretty much everything about his teammates, the organization and life in general.

Disappointment 2: Matt Holliday somehow entered a line-up, put up awesome numbers, and made the whole thing worse.

Seriously? How does this fucking happen?

I mean it’s done. We’ve got one weekend of baseball left, but this really happened. The Cardinals added Matt Holliday for a whole season and the total offense somehow got way, way worse. Not a little worse. But WAY worse.

I remember being giddy like a schoolgirl when the signed Holliday to that deal in the offseason. I mean, a full year of these guys bending over pitchers and giving them the business? Sign me up. But much to everyone’s chagrin, the offense pretty much sucked balls all season long and this dynamic 3 & 4 punch the Cardinals looked to have was a mirage. Yet it wasn’t, because those guys were great.

So confusing. {Click 'READ MORE' below to continue this article} 

I know Fresh WC demanded we didn't write about the Cardinals dead season, but I had to to do something.

I had to PAINT!