Tony? 

Never afraid to be his own man, Tony LaRussa is now the only manager in Major League Baseball history to retire after winning the World Series, leaving the St. Louis Cardinals after 16 seasons.

Your feelings on him aside, his legacy looms LARGE within this organization, community and fan base. Time romanticizes everything, and when you make the most improbable of post-season runs, lead a parade of hundreds of thousands of Cardinal Nation down Market Street and then retire? The news is only a few hours old and this already feels like a movie.

Midway through 2012, it’s going to feel like a looming specter hanging over the left field fence at Busch that Ballpark Village never has provided.

We’ll have much more on LaRussa this week, but a few thoughts immediately in the aftermath of this surprise bombshell.

+ I’ve always like LaRussa. Maybe it’s because I feel like he gets just as pissed as me when the Cardinals play like crap. Maybe it’s because his daughter Tweets at me now and again. Or anything in between. But the most formidable years of my baseball fan development were formed with LaRussa at the helm of my team. He’ll be the stick I measure other managers against, not Herzog.

+ Number 10 will not be worn again by a Cardinal. It’s possible that two future retired numbers will leave the Cardinals after the same Championship season. That’s crazy.

+ The next manager of the Cardinals needs to have experience. Remember when Tino Martinez replaced McGwire? That was awful. And Martinez was an established MLB player. A good one at that. Back to my point about the romantic nature of this exit. There will be no ‘what ifs’ for TLR. He left at the top and the next manager will have to live up to that expectation. To put a first time coach in that dugout with what will be a championship contender in 2012 is a mistake.

+ Probably not happening, but I’m looking at Joe Maddon in Tampa and thinking he’d do just about anything for this job. I’d love to have him. If I had to bet a buck, I say Jim Riggleman takes the reins.

More later…

no comments

Our friends over at Chartball Posters have created an interactive poster for the 2011 Cardinals season... that includes every single moment that happened.

Click on the LINK HERE to play around with this thing. Damn impressive.


  no comments

How do the newspapers look a day after the World Series? We did a half-assed internet search and found these:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch


Columbia Daily Tribune


Belleville News-Democrat


Dallas Morning News


Tengen Sports News (I don't know about you, but this is my favorite paper)


no comments

Champs.

Not a word found anywhere in this article (LINK HERE) entitled "The Fork Has Been Stuck. Again." that was penned on September 5th. Chump? Yes. Champ? No.

54 days later and the St. Louis Cardinals are now World Series Champs for the 11th time in their illustrious existence. Seriously guys, what just happened? 

Perspective is never easy so close. Every conversation you'll have this weekend and next week at the office will be laced with more superlatives than you can shake a stick at. Best World Series ever. Most satisfying championship of the 11. Greatest comeback team of all-time. For the time being, I'll leave those arguments for another time. The one thing, more than any other, that I'll take from this season is simple:

The 2011 Cardinals are why I love sports.

180 times this team took the field this calendar year. Up until about yesterday at 9:30p, I wasn't sure what this team actually was. I've been mad at this team; I've been sad for this team. I've loved this team; I've given up on this team. Name an emotion and I've felt it over the past 180 games. It's not always been fun, but in the end it was so, so satisfying. We all invested emotional capital in the 2011 Cardinals... the dividends paid back out were large.

With sports you just never know. Cliches are cliches because they're pretty much true. Don't give up, because you just never know. I think I read that in my Twitter feed a couple months back and just unfollowed on the spot. How could they be SO STUPID? I wish I knew who that Cards fan was so I could send them an apology.

The Cardinals gave credence to all the cliches. The Cardinals gave up 180 mini-dramas and one big narrative at the end.

The Cardinals gave us memories that we'll never forget.

Oh, and another championship.

Check out some of the pics that I took during GM 7 of the World Series 2011. They're mostly crap, but hey, pictures!


no comments

I'm not going to sit here and lie.

If my friend from Denver hadn't flown in for Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, I wasn't going to go. In fact, when he called me on Wednesday to try and figure out a game plan for the game, I asked him if he wanted both tickets.

Him: "WHAT?"

What was the point? I mean, if the Cardinals lose, I have no interest in sitting there and watching the Rangers celebrate on Busch Stadium grass. If the Cardinals win, I've already got Game 7 tickets and that will be amazing. What's the upside to going? Plus, with the rain delay pushing the game to Thursday, I could make a couple hundred bucks just selling them.

Him: "Remember Jim Edmonds? What if you miss that? Don't be an idiot."

Again, I can't lie. That argument rang a bit hollow. That Jim Edmonds walk-off HR in 2004 wasn't going to be repeated, right? The chances were infinitesimal that something like that happens again. But screw it, he'd never been to a World Series game before. 

BEST. DECISION. EVER.


It's easy to get caught up in the hyperbole the day after, but I honestly don't know if I'm going to be able to top last night. We might have reached the pinnacle of baseball excitement. And every highlight package and news story I see shows me something I missed watching the game from far out in left field. 

Just how close Nelson Cruz was to catching that Freese Double. Or the fact that the season was down to the last strike. Twice! Or the Cardinals organized bench sitting for luck. Or the shredded jersey and bat being sent to the Hall of Fame. The list is INSANE.

The lesson, as it pretty much is always, is that we can talk ourselves out of pretty much anything. Costs too much. Work will suck tomorrow. What about the kids. Etc al. 

But the people that grab life by the apple bag and just go do it are sometimes rewarded. 

And sometimes they are rewarded with the memories that will never, ever go away.

no comments

Ticket prices have picked up for GM7 of the World Series.

Actually, that's probably a understatement. If you want mine, I'm thinking I'll pick up the phone around 3K...

Updated Inventory: LINK HERE 

   no comments

MLB Advanced Media are really fan-centric.

They've made it impossible to embed video, they're so much so.

Enjoy the walk-off HR by David Freese: LINK HERE

Enjoy the Cardinals enjoying it below...

  no comments

no comments

World Series Game 6 take two. ACTION! 

It wouldn’t be late October in St. Louis without 40 degree days spiced heavily with a driving drizzle. So MLBs Director of Operations Joe Torre called off WED’s tilt and re-scheduled it for Thursday. Game 7 (if needed) was pushed back to Friday.

(Side Bar: I love Joe Torre. I do. Back in the early 90s I had a cable access show about sports with one of my buddies. We were in grade school at the time, so we were short- remember that. Torre was then the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.

One day my buddy’s grandpa got us in touch with the Cardinals PR department and they let us go on the field before a game and interview players. Considering these players are all like 6’3” and above and we were probably 4’ at the time, my most enduring memory is holding the mic above my head for long periods of time while Ray Lankford, Todd Zeile and the like blabbed on and on like we were real reporters. In retrospect, it was pretty amazing how straight these guys played it. They were giving us the same cliches that they'd give any other reporter.

Anyway...

Joe Torre was the only person that knelt down to get to eye level when we talked to him. He seemed to actually be aware that we were kids. It wasn’t a coincidence that it turned out to be the best interview we did. My arm wasn’t throbbing after talking to him.

Our local paper (Edwardsville Intelligencer) did a story on the whole excursion and the big quote they pulled out of me was that Joe Torre was my favorite interview… “because he knelt down so my arm didn’t get tired.”

Much more innocent times back then. I’m sure if there was Google back in 1993, he’d have been asked about this at a later date. Perhaps by Chris Hansen.

There is your Joe Torre story for the day.)

The debate has been swirling since the official word came down that the games had been pushed back. Most of it centered around who this delay of 1 day actually favors.

PRO- It’s a real possibility that Chris Carpenter can come back on 4 days rest if a game 7 is needed.

CON- The Cardinals know their backs are against the wall and had and extra day to think about how they can’t screw up in Game 6 or it’s all over.

PRO- An extra day to get a brutal loss out of everyone’s head gives the Cardinals a fresh start.

CON- You really want Jamie Garcia sitting around for 24 more hours thinking about this start?

The list goes on.

As much as we’d like to predict the future, we can’t. Anything is possible. Literally anything. Like the Game 6 video we linked to yesterday (see below) or the most forgettable game of the season (albeit one that will have the Rangers dog piling on the field, celebrating their first championship and starting an avalanche of ‘Is Dallas The New Title Town USA’ stories from hack writers far and wide.)

In that vein, I’d like to direct you to THIS PIECE.

Read that. Please. I know many of you might have a pre-conceived notion on what Tim is or isn’t. But seriously, just read that. I really couldn’t have said it better myself.

THIS is what it’s literally all about.

no comments

  TLR will not be making any terrible decisions tonight.

  Full article HERE .

  Check back tomorrow for more second hand coverage.









no comments