Despite years of evidence to the contrary, your pals at the CD are actually not bad people. We've had some huge DVD giveaways lately, and just last night I threw some bread out for the neighborhood birds to snack on. It was a tad moldy, but there's no way the jerks at Viva El Birdos are that considerate. No chance.

Which is why our friends at Elasticity - a local marketing agency and the brilliant minds behind the American Mustache Institute - contacted us about Raffle STL.  It's a raffle website benefiting St. Louis Men's Group Against Cancer, with tickets starting at $1. One of the big prizes is a chance to fly down to Florida to see the Cardinals during Spring Training.

Fly with the St. Louis Cardinals

We’ll hook you up with four tickets to two spring training games in the sunshine state. We’ll put you up for three nights in the team’s hotel. Hang with the 2011 World Series Champs and hear all the personal stories about their close series victory over the Texas Rangers and about playing under the guidance of the recently retired Tony LaRussa. If you’re a true fan, you should be giddy with excitement just reading this. Get in now for a chance to get all your best Cardinals’ swag signed at spring training camp.

So they're basically taking away all the difficult parts of a Spring Training trip? Deal. After buying waffle makers and Mad Men DVDs all weekend, the least you could do is put a few bucks towards a good cause, and maybe you'll end up in Florida while we miserably trudge through the latter part of winter.

Check out RaffleSTL.com for this and other cool raffles. Good luck to our kind readers - oh, and keep us in mind for those three extra tickets if you win.

no comments

We had some good success giving away the World Series Movie last week and 3 lucky winners have their copies en route. I've watched the damn thing twice and both times litearlly came out of my seat to yell at the TV. If you buy it, you'll enjoy it. You've blown your stack on way worse. 

But what if you're a real baseball nerd like us? What if you want the whole Game 6 or the whole Game 7? What if you want to get the whole Pujols experience in Game 3?

We've got you. It's the biggest CD contest EVER. (Underline for emphasis.)

Our friends at A+E Networks Home Entertainment & MLB Productions are giving us 5 copies of the 2011 World Series Collectors Edtion DVD Set. Yes, all the games, in their entirety plus bonus footage never before seen in one kick-ass package. I made a pledge to never turn down a company if they wanted to give away stuff to our readers for free. Frankly, this is the best we've done so far. 

CHECK OUT THE COLLECTION HERE

That's not too shabby right? In fact, I'd encourage you to play, even if you don't want this. You can give it to the Cardinals fan in your life for the holidays and instatnly become their favorite person, probably ever. Encourage friends, family and others to check the site out and guess for themselves as well... the more chances the merrier.

How To Win?

We're also pretty lazy, so let's just play the same game we played last week. Guess a number. Any number from 1-200. The five guesses closet to the number that has been picked will get the collection.

Post your guesses in the comment section.

(Note: If you haven't used our comment system before, you can type in a number and press "Post Comment" - it'll ask you to connect with your Twitter, Facebook or other accounts. Chances are you've got one on a site that works with this, so you're good. If not, you can register quickly with LiveFyre for a free one. We had some questions on this last week.)

The contest will close @ 23:59p CT on Tuesday 11/29/11. Please make your guesses before then. If we reach 200 guesses, then we'll close the contest upon that 200th comment.

Quit reading this. Make a guess. And we'll ship these out so you get them ASAP. And as always, thanks for reading Cards Diaspora.  

  no comments

Deadspin.com blew Albert Pujols' agent out of the water early this week. If you haven't read the full article, (LINK HERE) please do so. Be warned, it's graphic and troubling. 

The big revelations?

+ Why was Pujols' last contract so bad? And why didn't he test the free agent market last time? Lozano was reportedly close to bankrupt and needed that commission to stay solvent.

+ Lozano is "The King Of Sleaze Mountain" or at least described as such by other agents. Photos of him performing oral sex on women that he then sent to players for approval seem to be legit. 

+ He ran an undercover prostitution ring that closed deals with players.

+ He's acting as a man of faith, just to please Pujols.

The list goes on and it's as seedy as it sounds. 

Now anyone that's been in or around the sports agent business will tell you it's a dirty job. After all, what would you have wanted if you were a 20 year old single man with millions of dollars coming your way? For every guy like Pujols who's a devout Christian who is concerned about his charitable efforts and faithful to his wife... there are 100 guys like you were in college, looking to party and get laid.

Add to this the X-Factor - that players can drop agents when they want, with little to no penalty, and now you've got a situation ripe for a 'plain manilla envelope' to show up at every sports site on the internet with salacious gossip and rumors and sometimes evidence. You're not just battling the kids or the kids circle of friends and family, but you're also having to watch your back from other agents stealing business.

With that in mind, this packet of information most certainly came from another agent. Someone with something to gain (Pujols, perhaps?) by making this a news story. We should remember that.

BUT...

It doesn't mean that Dan Lozano is making Pujols out as his golden goose. Pujols doesn't need Lozano. Lozano needs Pujols, probably now more than ever. Imagine Albert dropping Dan in this, his moment, because of this scandal. Lozano would have a very hard time overcoming that, at least in the short term.

Derrick Goold of the Post-Dispatch has been in contact briefly with Pujols and he's reported that Lozano is still his agent and will be for the immediate future. A cadre of rumors, albeit less well reported, have been run by Albert from time to time the past couple of years and he's brushed them back with little to no comment.

That's probably the most unsettling of this whole Pujols negotiation with the Cardinals.

1. Is Lozano going to be out to stick it to whatever team signs Pujols just to make a point that he didn't screw his client the first time around? Is he going to want to show up and coming superstars that Scott Boras isn't the only guy who can get top dollar for his client?

2. Speaking of Boras, is he going to wait for Fielder (Boras' client) to set the market before he really starts negotiating? How many bridges is he willing to burn to get his name in the headlines as the guy that beat Boras?

3. Is he wrecking Pujols' pretty sterling reputation in St. Louis? I mean, It's not Pujols' fault that this agent allegedly likes hookers, but at the same time, how smart is it of Pujols to let all these stories fly without having a real discussion about them with Lozano?

4. Just who is pulling the strings in the Pujols camp, anyway?

Not much STL Media has picked up on the story. KSDK did a kind of overview that included an interview with the author of the Deadspin.com piece (LINK HERE), but other than that, It looks like this is kind of an afterthought.

Probably a mistake. If anything, the Penn State scandal has proved that ignoring problems aren't going to make the situation any better. Everyone involved with Lozano better be checking their facts and asking the tough questions this off-season. And if they don't and if Lozano turns out to be everything that Deadspin reported and maybe more... then we'll have to hold Pujols accountable for enabling these actions.

This story isn't going away. It may be forgotten for a while, but it'll surface again. 

no comments

Ed Note: This article was originally published in 2008 on Cards Diaspora by Fresh WC after the devastating news that Rusty’s, an Edwardsville IL ‘Skanksgiving’ tradition was shuttered.

For whatever reason, this article got put up in 2009 & 2010 and by giving it some run again, we've created a monster. As long as this site is in operation, the day prior to Thanksgiving will have this post up...

The vast majority of you will not find this post amusing/entertaining in the least. But it’s become something I look forward to reading every year on this day.

So I hope you’ll indulge us posting this again…

Skanksgiving: a time to share joy, cocktails, and inflated stories of success with the majority of your graduating high school class. 

“People who get excited about NYE are d-bags. Skanksgiving is where it’s at,” offered loyal CD reader and problem drinker John Bucher. “If every day was Skanksgiving, you could say goodbye to the Taliban and hello to world peace.”  

But it won’t be all fun and games for one quiet St. Louis suburb this year. 
This brimming hamlet’s 28,000+ residents began their 2009 Skanksgiving with a burning and all important question: “ Where the hell am I supposed to go tonight now that Rusty’s is closed?

Edwardsville, Illinois: Baseball Town, USA. – once the home to Rusty’s Restaurant, a place thousands of proud Edwardsville Tigers felt was the Skanksgiving capital of the world.  One of Edwardsville’s first victims of the recent economic downturn, Rusty’s had their final last call June 4, 2008- and closed their doors forever.

Current dentist and future rehab visitor Beau Moody offered the CD his take:

“I mean…I’m never going to go to a class reunion- Skanksgiving at Rusty’s was as close as it’s ever going to get for me.  I love Laurie’s, but it’s just not the same.  Quite frankly, I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with this tragedy.”

Downtown watering holes Laurie’s Place, the Stagger Inn (Again), and Cleo’s stand ready to pick up the slack, but it won’t be enough for local attorney Tom Ludwig.  “ I wouldn’t even step foot in Rusty’s any day other than Skanksgiving.  Now that it’s gone, I guess I’ll just stay home this year.  I’m deeply saddened by our community’s loss.” 

Though many intend to move on with their lives and give the recently re-badged Big Daddy’s their business this Skanksgiving, some are unable to let go. 

As early as Sunday evening, flyers were circulating the streets of Edwardsville calling for a gathering in the now vacant Rusty’s parking lot for a Candle & Natural Light vigil to mourn the legend of Rusty’s Skanksgiving.  But regardless of tonight’s plans, the landscape of Edwardsville’s night-before-major-holidays-nightlife is forever changed. 

no comments

Our fine friends over at A+E Networks Home Entertainment & MLB Productions have given CardsDiaspora.com 3 copies of the 2 disc set to give away. 

Score.

HMW's posting of the clip last week paid off, I guess. Now you get to feel the love. The premiere party for the video is tomorrow night at the Peabody Opera House but since you're in no shape to leave the house, we'll go ahead and spare you the suspense... David Freese is showing up.

I know, right? 

So now that we've ruined the suspense, we'll just go ahead and ship you the good stuff directly.

HERE IS HOW TO WIN: 

Pick a number from 1 to 100 and post it in the comment section. The three guesses closest to the number win. That's it. That's the game. We already got our copies at The CD HQ, so we don't really care who wins. 

Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your mistress to enter. The more the merrier. This contest will close on 11/22/11 @ 23:59 Central. So make sure to get your entry in before then.

And if you're not one of the lucky ones, you can still buy a copy: LINK HERE TO BUY

Scroll down the page if you want to see the video trailer again. I'm serious when I say this is one of the best freebies we've given away on The CD. You WANT THIS.

Promise.
no comments

I’m troubled. 

Some days I really like the hiring of Mike Matheny as the Cardinals next manager, but I can’t tangibly justify why. Other days I kind of don’t like the hiring of Mike Matheny as the Cardinals next manager, but until Saturday, I had no tangible justification for this stance either.

The Post-Dispatch broke the story that Mike Matheny has recently had his house foreclosed on and is currently listing his in-laws residence as his address. (READ WHOLE STORY HERE)

The tanking economy has snarled many decent and honest people in the past 4 years. It has changed completely the lens of how we view banks, government and commerce as a whole. We’re probably more educated about how the housing market works than many companies would like us to be. And when Mike Matheny built a 17 room house in Wildwood back in the early 2000’s, it didn’t show much prudence, but it wasn’t necessarily a horrible decision, per se.

After all, Wildwood (nee Grover) was a burgeoning St. Louis suburb and even if Matheny was traded, he’d be able to find a buyer for the house and probably even make a little profit on the investment.

I remember about 2004, a good buddy of mine, calling me and telling me that something was F’d up with the mortgage industry. He was working right out of college at what we now know was chop shop for loans. Basically approving any amount of money for a loan as long as you had a job and pulse.  He had gone to college and studied economics and finance. He knew that giving 300,000 loans to people making 10 dollars an hour wasn’t going to last… but he was also making more money than he’ll probably make in the next 20 years.

Eventually, he quit. But he’s one of the few that actually questioned what the hell was going on. I don’t want to say that they’re weren’t others, but the vast majority of people knew that shit was going to hit the fan eventually, but decided to ride the gravy train until it de-railed. Hell, I went to college to study English and PR and I knew something was fucked up. Luckily, I just kept renting and trying to grind out the start of my career.

The bubble burst in a big way, in 2008, collapsing a vertical market worse than most people alive had ever seen. Comparisons were made to the Great Depression. And Mike Matheny was left personally guaranteeing over 11M worth of loans for property investments in St. Louis and beyond.

Recently the new Cardinals skipper stopped making house payments and decided to move back in with the in-laws. He was like millions of other Americans – underwater on his house and not getting a life preserver. It was the better financial decision to walk away.

Here’s where it gets sticky.

As a pretty responsible guy with minimal debt, a big part of me wants to know why Mike decided to leverage himself against a sum of money that was a little bit less than his total career earnings.  Even in rip-roaring times, it’s not a great idea.  So why did Mike do it?

That’s the question that I’ve been struggling with for the past couple of days. Even a big dummy educmucated in English from a public college in KY knows that A) you don’t want to personally guarantee loans and B) it’s not responsible to guarantee loans for what your projected to make… so why did it happen?

Greed? Bad advice? Irresponsibility?

Frankly, it’s none of my business. And I don’t expect Mike Matheny to have to answer questions about his personal finances. He’s done what he’s done and only him and the bank need to work out a plan to get square.

But It does give us a bit of insight into the decision making process of a grown man. Frankly, I’m disappointed.

Obviously, I wasn’t in the same position as Mike.  I didn’t have a multi-million dollar contract in 2004 or 2005. Maybe I would have made the exact same mistakes as Mike. But I wonder, at least a little, about the people like Mike that were so thoroughly beaten up by the housing and real estate market. Because I am sure that I could have gotten a loan for 200 or 300 or even 400 thousand dollars back then with very little effort.

I also knew that if something was too good to be true, it probably was. So I stuck to what I felt was right and didn’t get greedy.

Where was the same judgment for Mike? Did at any point did he think that all this was just a bit too easy? What is he learning from the position that he’s in? That’s what I’m curious about.

It’s easy to sweep this under the rug. I know that many people won’t think that this has a iota of meaning to how he manages. And perhaps it doesn’t. But as a dude that controlled himself during these crazy times, it’s always unsettling to hear the stories of the people that didn’t.

Just so happens that one of those guys is managing the Cardinals now. And frankly, we don’t have anything else to go off of.

no comments

It’s Friday!

Albert Pujols is finally signing with the Cardinals and making sure that history remembers one of its best as a redbird for life!!

Wait, what?

How can you have a celebratory press conference marking one of the biggest contracts in the history of the sport with the media relations team taking an extended weekend?

So, wait, JC isn’t right about this?

I think we all knew this was a publicity stunt from the gun. Why? Well, Corcoran claiming from the start that this wasn’t a media stunt is exhibit A. (See him blast “bloggers in their moms’ basement who keep telling him it’s a media stunt: LINK HERE) Or the fact that JC works IN the media where it serves his best interests to have people listening to his radio show or watching his online videos.

He mentions how crazy it is to pick up 1200 followers in a single day multiple times. People who don’t care about Twitter followers wouldn’t look at their Twitter followers and draw correlations between Tweets and new followers.

Then again, that makes too much sense.

No, Albert will still be a free agent come Saturday and JC will tell people that sometimes stories like this aren’t exactly right.

But let this be a lesson to all – One scoop does a trusted source not make. He got lucky with the TLR story and shoved his chips all in. After all, what did he have to lose? People are talking about JC Corcoran again in St. Louis.

In the end, that’s all he really cared about.

Now, the Friday Links…

• For all the people with glasses and bad eyesight out there. LINK HERE
• Lucky, lucky ceral eater. LINK HERE
• The best, worst choir of all time. LINK HERE
• Pizza will soon become a vegetable? Really? LINK HERE
• Jon Stewart on Jerry Sandusky. LINK HERE
• This is how you Snooker. LINK HERE

That's it. That's the week.

Have a big weekends, you guys. Go do something awesome.

no comments

Blame HMW.

He got everyone all hot and bothered with Jon Hamm earlier today. And I don't like to play second fiddle to anyone's erotic baseball-ish-ness, dammit.

So while surfing the world wide web yesterday, I came across this clip. It's from a video studio called Bruton Stroube that makes commericals for all sorts of clients. But this one stood out because the guy is wearing, what we can only assume is, a Colby Rasmus game worn hat. And not much else.

Was this really a planned ad campaign for the Cardinals? I don't know if I can support the team as well if this replaces 'Play Like A Cardinal'.

Ladies (and some of you fellas) ENJOY!


no comments

You spent a crapload of money on beer and food throughout October. You spent a metric crapload on World Series tickets. You...no...you didn't buy a Rally Squirrel shirt, did you??

Your bank account is fed up with the abuse; remember when it had a couple more columns? You even pushed back your meeting with your financial advisor, telling them "NoEverythingsFineGotLotsOfMoneyAlmostTooMuchMoneyHaHaHaHaHaHaHaGottaGoBye!"

You've had a couple weeks to let that World Series hangover fade away, thanks to ramen dinners and shopping at Aldi, but now Jon Hamm reminds you how much you're going to be spending on Cardinal crap from now until Christmas:


Yeah boy. Next Tuesday the 22nd, this DVD comes out. The price tag could be $300, but you know you want it. We're all buying this thing to re-live how awesome the last two months of our lives have been.

If one of you were to knock over the stand of DVDs at Best Buy and swim around in them, laughing and yelling "Fuck You Cubs," would they stop you? How many others would join in? (Come on people, let's make this a "thing.")

Or if you really have too much money laying around, you can attend the premiere next Tuesday at the Peabody Opera House. Maybe Jon Hamm will be there in person? Maybe the Cardinal Cowboy? Same thing. Just be glad we didn't get stuck with Rob Schneider for two hours like Giants fans.

no comments

Last week Albert Pujols traveled to Miami to meet with the Marlins, check out their new stadium and receive a “substantial contract offer” from owner Jeffery Loria.

This in and of itself wasn’t news. Ever since contract negotiations broke down with Pujols and the Cardinals before Spring Training started, the all-world first baseball said he intended to test the free-agent market. But after a magical October run that produced the franchises eleventh World Series title, the headlines were a bit jarring.

I mean, really? The guy surely couldn’t leave St. Louis after THAT post-season. No way.

Then again, maybe he would. It’s always nice to feel really wanted.  The one sure thing is that Cards Diaspora readers are awesome. To wit:

"Have you ever thought about it like this?

Pujols is vinny chase.  He's a free agent.  He's going go around the MLB hearing all these elaborate pitches. The Marlins will woo him with talk of a new stadium and being close to the Dominican and being amongst his Latino people. 

The Cubs will talk about being the savior of Chicago and finally breaking the curse under this new era on the North Side.  The Dodgers will flaunt Hollywood and the SoCal weather and becoming the face a rebuilt franchise - a franchise that can compete with the Cardinals in stature and success.  And ALL OF THEM, are going to offer more money. ALL OF THEM will talk about how they're willing to spend, spend, spend to build a championship team around him.

So should the Cards fall in line and come up with some grandiose proposal and desperately raise their bid to match the competition?  Well, remember what happened when Ari made that mistake with Vinny Chase.  All Vinny wanted was for Ari to be himself.  To show him that he WAS NOT like all the rest.

Who knows....maybe DeWitt watches Entourage."

Thanks for that Bo from Denver.

That was the call of the year so far on this whole Pujols free agent ordeal.

no comments