TOWER GROVE — Sure Jim Edmonds was taken aback by Tony La Russa’s refusal to acknowledge his presence — or some sort of gamesmanship like that — this past week, but the former Cardinal quickly came up with a favorite response for fans.
During the Cubs’ batting practice on Saturday, a fan called out to Edmonds: “You used to be my favorite Cardinal.” Edmonds turned and said something to like he still could be, that becoming a Cub didn’t erase his history with the Cardinals, did suck the life and meaning out of the hits he had here or the catches he had out there.
Then he turned to see the sign over the Cardinals’ dugout: “Benedict Edmonds.”
He smiled at the sign’s owner, Marty (Sign Man) Prather, and trotted out his favorite line of the weekend.
“Different color. Same person,” Edmonds said tugging at his warmup. “It’s just a color.”
Prather yelled back: “See you in August.”
“If you’re lucky,” Edmonds replied, “you’ll see me in October.”
***
The Cubs return home today for a last run of games before the All-Star break, and they are staring down a haul of road games in the second half. Of the Cubs’ 67 games after the break, 35 will be away from Wrigley Field, where the Cubs are 33-10 entering tonight’s game. The highest scoring offense in the National League (with a league-leading 475 runs, 18 more than second-place Philadelphia), the Cubs have yet to score their 200th run on the road this season. Their batting average, slugging percentage and on-base percentage — all at or near the top of the league overall — rank fifth or lower on the road.
With the division as tightly-packed as it is, I asked Cubs’ first baseman Derrek Lee if playing .500 baseball on the road would be good enough for the Cubs to win the title.
“We just don’t score (on the road),” Lee said. “If we don’t get a greating pitching performance, it seeems like we haven’t won. We have to find a way to swing the bats a little bit better on the road, score some runs. We score 2, 3, 4 runs on the road, whereas at home we’re scoring 5, 6, 7 runs.
“I don’t see why we can’t play .500 on the road,” he concluded. “We’re a good team. It’s just one of those years and it’s not like we played horrible on the road. We’ve played just-bad-enough-to-lose-type of thing. It’s that one-run game, where we don’t get the extra runs that we need. I think we’ll figure out a way.”
***
It was a bittersweet tour I took last Thursday at Sporting News’ emptying office out in Chesterfield. Boxed and stacked and ready to move was thousands and thousands of pieces of baseball history. (Wrote about the vast treasure of baseball history that is leaving town in today’s paper.) Some of the things from the collection that I didn’t include in the story:
- Musial, on his questionnaire, wrote his hobbies were “movies — played basketball.”
- Mantle, on his questionnaire from the early 1950s, wrote that his eye color was “grey” and his name is pronounced “Mantle” and, under the question about his most outstanding performance in baseball, Mantle wrote: “Hitting 2 HR’s - a triple a double & single in one game while at Kansas City - again Toledo.”
- If you wanted a Middle Tennessee State football media guide from the 1980s, this was the place to find it.
- Also, a special media guide labeled: “1974 Hank Aaron Guide.”
- Cobb wrote many of his letters in green ink. You play psychologist.
- Before this Internet fad stormed into sports reporting, Sporting News subscribed to 100 daily newspapers and editors were instructed during their free time to clip articles. Those articles were collected and organized according to player or subject. There are thousands of pouches containing the clippings of a life’s work — not just the player’s but also the reporters and editors and assistants who carefully scissored their way around the copy to preserve the information for someone, somewhere in the future.
- There are also hundreds of boxes of cards, like a library’s card file. On each card is a player’s name, birthday, hometown and his transaction history. The Sporting News had one of these for every person who played pro ball. Somebody once called archivist Steve Gietschier to find out information about his father, who played minor-league ball but wouldn’t talk about it. Gietschier found a few cards for players who shared a name, so he started reading the addresses of each player. “That,” the son said, “is the house I’m calling from.”
The first time I learned about the archives was in college, when an editor at Sporting News pulled me aside and said: “I’ve got to show you something.” He opened up a box of files and pulled out that Mantle questionnaire. It was like somebody allowing you a peek at the recipe for Coca-Cola. There was Mantle’s handwriting, Mantle’s answers. I never forgot seeing that, and got to see it again Thursday.
The archives will be missed around here, but the plan is to put it to good use out east. The worry for people who worked around the archives is that it will be more of a collection than a resource.
***
La Russa’s next-day reaction to the ovation for Edmonds: “That was to be expected. I sure it felt good for him.”
***
OK, so the Phillies, who have lost three consecutive coming into tonight’s series-opener at Citizens Bank Park, have scored 155 runs this season against lefthanded pitchers. No team in the National League has scored more. The Phillies 19-12 record against lefty starters is tied for the most victories in the league. Their slugging percentage is .460 against lefties, and only Colorado’s is better.
So this is the team that Mark Mulder will face in his first start of the season, the first start of what is probably his last chance to be in the Cardinals rotation? Seems fair.
Bernie Miklasz runs down some of the other (better) numbers on the Phillies in his blog, Extra Points. Using the Phillies’ past series against the Mets as a guide, here is the lineup that Philadelphia is likely to start against Mulder when he starts Wednesday night (stats are the usual, BA/OBP/SLG, all vs. lefties):
-
Jayson Werth, RF … .318/.389/.671
-
Chase Utley, 2B … .309/.385/.640
-
Jimmy Rollins, SS … .259/.310/.444
-
Ryan Howard, 1B … .187/.245/.353
-
Pat Burrell, LF … .281/.539/.425
-
Pedro Feliz, 3B … .320/.359/.598
-
Shane Victorino, CF … .232/.305/.379
-
Chris Coste, C … .302/.581/.367
***
For folks who frequented the blog here during spring training, you may remember the (far too infrequent) Baseball Lexicon entries. During this weekend Cubs-Cards series, there was a conversation in the clubhouse about “Power Shagging” – its definition and its appropriate usage. There was also a new addition to the vocabulary from last week, after one of the Cardinals wins against the New York Mets. It comes courtesy of Cardinals’ third baseman Troy Glaus:
The Bull Durham Bus Ride (noun)
First, some conversational context. After the long, grueling game that Glaus won with his second home run of the evening, a walk-off shot just over the left-field wall, the Cardinals third baseman broke into a cloudburst of cliches.
“I think getting through that game just shows the heart, the grit, the determination that this team has,” he said. “This team has no quit in it. As long as we have outs to give, this team is going to fight.”
Told that he just hit for the cliche cycle, Glaus shrugged.
“That’s me. Cliches are what I got,” he said, and the added: “I’m straight off the Bull Durham bus ride.”
***
So … a quote, or an article or a movie or whatever, saturated with cliches can be described as “straight off the Bull Durham busride.”
***
Off to write the newsletter now. The Facebook page for Bird Land is up and running, and it has enough “fans” now to run an RSS feed right there on the page (thanks to those who made that possible). There’s also a spot there to make suggestions for the blog and we’re still finding new ways to use the interface. PostCards coming.
Will be back later with some prospect news.
-30-