Hello …

Let’s get started with some Cardinals’ business…

1. Chris Carpenter Needs Some Runs: In 10 starts, Carpenter is 5-2 this season with a 1.73 ERA and hitters are batting only .165 against him. He’s having an exceptional season but his win total isn’t what it should be because of the small supply of runs that the team is producing behind him. And the Cardinals are only 5-5 in Carp’s 10 starts. His run-support average of 2.74 per game is the second-lowest in the majors; San Francisco’s Barry Zito has gotten 2.70 runs per game. (These calculations are based on STATS LLC’s method of counting the runs that were scored while the pitcher was in the game). Carpenter hasn’t had a lot to work with, even when he wins. In his five victories his RSA is a modest 3.12. We saw it again Thursday at Citi Field. The Cardinals had early chances to accumulate some runs against Mets starter Johan Santana but kept stranding runners in scoring position. They finished 2 for 12 with RISP for the game. The St. Louis offense was dreadful in the team’s 1-3 series at New York; the Cardinals went only 6 for 27 with runners in scoring position and scored 9 runs in four games.

In 2009 the Cardinals have scored 3 runs or fewer in 35 of their 74 games.

2. How Essential is Albert Pujols to the Cardinals Offense? He can’t be perfect, and when he isn’t, the other guys don’t do enough to pick up the slack. It happened again Thursday in NY.  In the 6th inning of the 3-2 loss Pujols finally made an out with the bases loaded — it’s bound to happen, right? — and that was pretty much the end of things for the Cardinals. When Pujols drives in a run this season, the Cardinals are 27-9. When he plays and doesn’t drive in a run the team’s record is 13-24.  Pujols is batting .358 with runners in scoring position this season, so it’s petty to blame him when he misses on an opportunity.

3. The Missing Thunder in the Cardinals Outfield: It isn’t pretty.  Let’s go one-by-one:

- Rick Ankiel: Since Aug. 5 of last season, Ankiel is batting .215 with a .286 OBP and .376 SLG and has only 8 homers in 242 at-bats.

- Chris Duncan: Here’s the bottom line… healthy or not, the big fella has 11 homers in his last 446 at-bats, going back to late July, 2007. But if you want to break it down on what he’s done lately, Duncan’s numbers since May 2 are a .205 batting average, .252 OBP, and a .305 SLG. With 2 homers in 151 ABs.

- Ryan Ludwick: Since April 26 Ludwick is batting .173 with a .274 OBP and .315 SLG.

- In a combined 374 at-bats since May 1,  Ankiel-Ludwick-Duncan are hitting .208 with 12 homers.

- You can certainly make the case that rookie Colby Rasmus is the best hitter in the outfield right now. That isn’t saying much, considering that Rasmus is batting .265 on the season. But since May 26 the rookie is batting .326 with 3 homers and 9 doubles for a .566 slugging percentage. And that includes a .351 average vs. RH pitchers.

4. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson:

We’re going to go off sports here, if you don’t mind. If you’re a 50-year-old person like me, the deaths of McMahon, Fawcett and Jackson probably took you back through very specific periods of your lives.

In the 1960s, when TV was new and exciting for a young kid like me, and staying up late to watch it qualified as an adventure, The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson was a cultural touchstone. Johnny and his sidekick Ed McMahon introduced us to the stars, the starlets, the writers, the singers, the old-school comedians and the hip new comedians. There was good music and inside-ball humor and a certain coolness that was otherwise inaccessible. You could close your eyes and imagine Johnny and Ed and Michael Landon and Raquel Welch getting together after the show for martinis, a perfect steak, and maybe someone like Sinatra would be in the same restaurant and come by their table. And we knew we could never be as cool as Johnny — but we surely could relate to Ed, and it would be pretty swell to be Ed, and have all of that fun. We lived vicariously through Ed McMahon. It’s hard to explain or understand unless you grew up watching the show, but it really mattered. This was before cable, satellite TV, the internet, iPhones, 24-hour sports talk, ESPN, Entertainment Tonight, etc. Johnny and Ed took you to a new place, introduced you to a new sensibility, and formed a Zeitgeist lens through which we would view entertainment/culture for the rest of our lives.

Then we moved into the 1970s, and if you were a high school boy at the time, chances are you had a Farrah poster on the wall, or maybe one of your friends did. We watched her show,  Charlie’s Angels, and this was part of a natural discovery process. When you were about 10 or 11 they were just girls, sitting in your class, and you annoyed them, and they annoyed you, and there was no connection. You co-existed with them, and it was awkward, and you didn’t really understand how older guys could get all mushy and have girlfriends and take them presents and kiss them on the couch when the parents weren’t home.  The girls in your class seemed alien and somewhat threatening, and yet you sensed that there was something about them. An aura. And then one day…. they became WOMEN. And they were beautiful. And they were interesting. And you were curious. And anxious. And you found yourself staring at them and appreciating the way they looked, and you were enticed by their fragrance, and if one of them looked back at you in a certain way, your heart felt like a mini-basketball, bouncing inside your chest in a weird but wonderful way. And by now that Farrah Fawcett poster was definitely up on the wall, in that bathing suit and with the blonde locks, and instead of having debates over Ted Simmons vs. Johnny Bench, all of a sudden you were debating Farrah Fawcett vs. Jaclyn Smith, or later you’d argue over who was better: Farrah or Cheryl Ladd, the actress who replaced her. (I was more of a Ladd guy.) And yes, it was very silly, and still on the side of innocence, but gradually a threshold was being crossed, and you were going from boy to man. The teenage boys still loved their sports heroes, but all of a sudden there was room — lots of room — for the young women who captured our fancy. And so many of them were getting their hair cut and shaped to look like Farrah, which only heightened our awareness, and interest. Instead of playing basketball at recess, now you were wandering over to the corner of the schoolyard, over there by the tree, where the girls hung out. And somehow Farrah was part of that discovery process. A symbol of our evolution as we tried to walk like men. The poster was an announcement, an endorsement: we’re no longer little boys, and so we are here to tell you that women are awesome. And we like them.  

And Michael Jackson? Johnny Carson was the ’60s, and Farrah Fwacett was the mid-late ’70s (the high school years) and Jackson was the early ’80s, as we crossed that generational bridge. Look, I know about Jackson’s demons and the changes and his freakish look, and all of the sordid allegations against him. But I’m putting that aside now, because when his music mattered, none of the ugly stuff was part of the Jackson story. It was all about music and entertainment then. If you were in your early 20s when “Off the Wall” became a hit album, followed up by “Thriller” the top-selling album of all time, you’ll know how much Jackson mattered. He was just a mega star, the way Elvis had been, and the Beatles. And that music was the sound track for the times, especially in social settings. You’d go to clubs with a girlfriend — or maybe go there to find a girlfiend — and the place would be packed, and the lights would be shining, and all the young dudes and babes would be dancing or bouncing to “Rock With You.” Or in my case, we’d have summer parties at a beach house, and I’d usually be the DJ, and you could make the walls shake and get dozens people dancing in a living room or the front porch just by ripping through “Billie Jean,” and “Beat It,” and all of the hits on “Thriller.” And then after slowing it down a bit — maybe go old-school, with something slow by Johnny Mathis, which the ladies always appreciated – I’d spin some of the Jackson 5’s greatest hits, and the floors would tremble again — so much, in fact, that the fire marshall suddenly arrived one night and ordered an evacuation, because he feared that the old house would collapse. I’m not joking. We almost brought the house down. And Jackson supplied the beat.

As a young sportswriter, I was once on a long flight to San Diego to cover an indoor soccer playoff series, and I must have listened to the “Thriller” album in its entirety (on cassette) a few dozen times as I flew across the country. On the team bus, the players put it into the sound system and cranked it up again we moved down the freeways, en route to the arena. You just couldn’t get away from it, even if you wanted to. It was a booming phenomenon, and 20somethings all across America would stay at home to watch MTV and wait for the debut of the newest Michael Jackson video. It was a big deal, a very big deal. It seems quaint now, but at the time there was nothing bigger. We were all getting out of school and landing jobs and marrying and all of this was happening with Jackson singing in the background.

In some strange way it was all connected. In terms of the culture, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson formed a thread that led me (and many others) from childhood to adulthood. Not by themselves, obviously; we had many other influences. In particular, I loved many forms of music, and a lot of it (like Springsteen) was more important to me than Michael Jackson. But the three of them died this week, all in a row, and in retrospect you just appreciate them even more. Their presence represented a stop, a phase, in our lives. May they rest in peace.

If you made it this far, thanks for indulging me …

-Bernie