The Wall Street Journal is a great paper... except for the fact that you've got to give them money to read their articles.

Unless you're a fan of The CD. In which case, we're going to re-purpose interesting baseball realted fare here sometimes. Like this excellent piece from last week.

Enjoy!

The Anatomy of a Baseball Broadcast

By David Biderman

As Major League Baseball's postseason begins Wednesday, the sport's fans are prepping for what they'd call the most drama-packed month of the year—a time when families huddle around the television to see upsets pulled, heroes born and a World Series won.

But let's face it, they're also liable to spend lots of time watching guys standing around during pitching changes, dawdling on the mound or stepping out of the batter's box to perform some idiosyncratic ritual that involves tapping one's bat on one's shinguards.

It all got us thinking: Exactly how much genuine baseball action is there in an average baseball game?

Following the model of a similar study we did about football last season, we reviewed a pair of nationally televised nine-inning baseball games from earlier this season, one shown on Fox and the other on ESPN, and used a stopwatch to break them down into their component parts.

The stopwatch would start when a pitcher lifted his leg to begin his pitching motion. The timing would stop when the ball hit the catcher's mitt or, if it was put in play, when the presiding umpire made a call or the players all stopped moving (pickoff attempts and steals were also counted as action).

The result is that during these games, there was a nearly identical amount of action: about 14 minutes. To put that in context, that's about 10.9% of the total broadcast time (excluding commercials). It's a fraction of the roughly 88 minutes the players were shown standing around between plays, nearly 45% more than the 10 minutes of replays that are shown and almost four times as much as the cameras show players lounging in the dugout.

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

So the Cardinals, as we all know, pretty much sucked to watch in 2010. They were boring as all hell. Not only did they lose all the time, but they were painful to watch. If only science had something that proves that so we could end the debate once and for all that the '10 Cardinals were brutal to follow...

Wait, there IS?

What the F is that Hooks?

That's a chart created by the website Thuuz showing the excitement level all season long for all 30 MLB teams. Let's let them explain:

"It was another last-place finish for the Kansas City Royals, but by one measure, they were baseball's most-exciting team. Statistics company Thuuz analyzes games by accounting for things like run differentials, upset wins and comebacks. This system gave the Royals, who played in 57 one-run games, an MLB-high excitement score of 52.2. The cross-state St. Louis Cardinals were baseball's most-boring team by this standard."

That little blurb from the Wall Street Journal is pretty much saying that there is a science to deciding what games are exciting and that the Cardinals didn't have many in 2010.

Obviously excitement isn't a precursor to success (see: Royals, KC) but if you're not going to be playing in October, then at least it's good to be entertained, no? And the close games? Maybe that's just an indication that the Cards didn't give a crap for most of the games they played in.

Extrapolate what you will from this chart (hard to see, I know...) but it is, by any measure, the most tangible proof that your eyes weren't deceiving you... the Cardinals were a hot mess in 2010.

Now, the Friday Links...

• This is what you do when you live in a swamp. LINK HERE (HT: JRH)
• Why you don't bring dogs to a wedding. LINK HERE (HT: JRH)
• Car faces. When your car starts to look like a face. LINK HERE
• For the marketing people: You're logo makes me barf. The site. LINK HERE
• 5 great spitting moments in film. LINK HERE
• You need to visit 'Smiling Cigar Guy' now. LINK HERE
• Is this the worst Family Feud of all time? Possibly. LINK HERE

That's it. Those are the links. That is the post.

UPDATE (10/10/10) Friend of the site @CardsChic is having her class participate in a pretty cool little blog project. Please drop by and comment if you get a chance. LINK HERE

But before we go, a very historic milestone for Fresh WC and The Waterboy has been reached today. Hope your 20's was worth it.

-30-

Now why the hell would Tony need to go there?

To take a tour of the Flowbee Factory, duh. I'm sure everyone knew that, so carry on.

Any road trip out west has to include Las Vegas. Unfortunately Tony wasn't there to take in a Carrot Top show or hang backstage at the Wayne Newton concert. He was there for an epic boxing showdown with former friend Buzz Bissinger:

Is that Kevin Slaten and Dunc' at ringside? And Dan Caesar as the referee? What a star-studded event - I bet Elayne Boosler is there somewhere too. Why didnt' we go?

And finally, home. Instead of kissing his wife and lovely daughters, Tony races into his office, sits down for two hours and emerges with his lineup card for Dinner. It's kind of odd that he'd go against conventional wisdom and swap the wine and dessert at the bottom of the lineup, but no one at the LaRussa household is going to question this:

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.