Baseball: Those Saint Louis Cardinals

Montreal has some new spring training baseball games coming in March of next year. I like these games, I go to 'em ... to be honest I like the pre-game ceremonies better than the exhibition baseball (where 3rd stringers tend to enter the lineup at the 4th inning mark).  A lot of old favorites have cruised on in over the last few years from 70s/80s Expos stars, to 90s Expos stars, and other key figures to take part in the opening ceremonies.

I don't have that many ideas left to write about anymore, but writing is a fun exercise and a cool mental tool to exercise. There's certain times of the year, probably because they are topics I've done annually, where I get a sort of writin' bug. I wrote about the previous MTL Exhibition games over the last 4 or 5 years and it's becoming a yearly routine for me. I really liked the format of the Cincinnati Reds article I did where I focused on the Reds and my memories of 80s/90s baseball surrounding them. I tried to mix it up and go a different route with the Pittsburgh one last year ... and do modern "memories" of now-a-times stuff ... but who am I kidding? I'm a Nostalgia Man, I love the past pretty well.

I'm gonna go back to the Cincinnati-one format for this where I think it had the right mix of Comedy, Baseball History, and Montreal Baseball Return Promotion (45% Comedy, 30% Baseball History, 25% MTL Baseball Return Being-Down-Withness).

In the meat of that one, I talked about the Best Red, and My Favorite Red. So, let's do that but for those Old St. Louis Cardinals this time who are venturing to baseball-less Montreal to play some friendly old baseball games in March (these are like Monday and Tuesday I think not Friday and Saturday like the previous four times).


Cardinals!

I know the Cards got into some murky water last season or two ago with something about attaining some informations in a "by hook or by crook" format ... but that's not the Cards I know and like ... my main thoughts of that team that come to mind when I think of them are from the "Whitey Ball" era (no that's not a bad term for white people playing baseball, it's based off the stratagems of one Whitey Herzog ... who was the main tactician for the Cards for many years).

Note the Napoleaning of the hand.

Baseball now a days thinks the fans want homers or strikeouts ... and they are kind of altering the game (for what they think is better) to achieve more HR and K ... but I loved Whitey Ball, baby.

I remember in Earl Weaver's book, the man who basically was the key influence on wanting walks and home runs ... he said the reason he set up his lineup for the "3 run homer" was because he coached in Baltimore and hitting homeruns out of Memorial Stadium was particularly easy (the corners of the fences for example stood at 309 feet out which is ludicrous). Weaver says in his book that if he coached in Kaufman in Kansas City (corners there were 330 feet out) he'd load his lineup with speedsters instead of power hitters.

Basically, how you design your stratagems is dependent on the battlefield in baseball. What was Whitey Herzog dealing with at Busch in the 80s? He had 330 corners like at Kaufman (I guess Missouri likes far out corners) so he designed a strategic deployment based on vicious unrelenting speed and thus Whitey Ball was born.

Let's do a leaderboard of stolen bases for the 1985 Cards (this is ONE TEAM mind you, not the entire league leader board):

1985 Cards Stolen Base Leaders:

Vince Coleman 110
Willie McGee 56
Andy Van Slyke 34
Ozzie Smith 31
Tom Herr 31
Lonnie Smith 12

In 2017 that's not even the combined NL/AL leaderboard let alone the leaders of a single team! Whitey Ballers weren't just running .... they were RUNNING THEIR DICKS LOOSE!

When the Cards won the Trophy in '82 you know who had the most homers on the team? One George Hendrick and you know how many he had? A whole 19 of them. They didn't even have one 20 homerun hitter when they went all the way in 1982.

Look at ol' Whitey in that photo ... with his hand all Napoleoned in his pocket like that. There's only one sort of very specific person who comports themselves in that fashion ... only Dynamic Strategists comport themselves as such. When you see a dude nonchalantly looking about the place with a single hand in the pocket and one hand flappin' loose ... he may seem to be nonchalant as shit but that person has a myriad of scenarios being calculated and re-calculated in his mind. Yes, a person who comports themselves like that are always Dynamic Strategists.


The Best Cardinal

Lots of choice here with a team that was founded in 1900 ... you've got quite a lot of names to chose from but I still think the choice isn't that hard. From glossing over historical stats only briefly it's not hard to settle on this name as the Greatest Cardinal of Talent-Wise of All Entire Time....

Bob Gibson. 

He was 251- 174 for the Cards in his career with a 2.91 ERA and 3117 strikeouts. That's some amazing numbers for a pitcher. His best year is almost unreal ... in 1968 he was 22 and 9 with a 1.12 ERA over 304 innings pitched!! That's the closest thing to total Absolute Ultimate Dominance that there is for a pitcher.

A starting pitcher of today would not even fathom pitching 300+ innings let alone while maintaining a 1.12 ERA throughout. People think Nolan Ryan was the pitcher who came the closest to Absolute Total Ultimate Dominance on the mound but Nolan never put up anything like that in his career. Nolan did get under 2 in ERA one year but in the strike shortened 1981 season where he had a 1.69 over 149 innings pitched.

1.12 over 304 by Bob Gibson .... is just .... Dolemite-esque in Nature. It's As Bad as Can (be). He was basically a Human Tornado in 1968.

I never saw him pitch other than in archived videos but I don't need any live-scoutage under my wings of analysis to proclaim Bob Gibson as the greatest Card talent-wise ever  ... I mean great googly moo this man was a House of Utter Pitching Fire, truth be told.

Runner Up for this Award: Stan "The Man" Musial


My Favorite Cardinal of all time

Now, this section is where I let my personal bias seep into the mix and I gently toss my analytical abilities out the old window, and relate to the reading audience who my favorite Cardinal was. As an 80s kid and 90s teen ... the 1980s and 1990s are my area of most nostalgia for baseball so the player will be from that 20 year period no doubt. 1900-1980 and 2000-2017 are not my area of nostalgic expertise.

The criteria to be awarded the championship of this section of the article isn't the same as the Talent portion where deep analytic thinking helped derive Bob Gibson for that honor ... this section is more "Did I like that dude's name a lot?" .... "Did the dude do a helluva lotta sick back flips before taking his position in the field?" .... "were his baseball card photos funny and/or cool looking?"

I had a shortlist but I narrowed the shorty down to two finalists. Al Hrabosky and Ozzie Smith.

The Mad Hungarian is a slight notch or two on the chronoscale ahead of my time ... but I'm not doing a Cardinals article without getting a quote of his in here. I mean, here, check out this one ... wait it needs set up. The Cards management asked Hrabosky to shave his iconic facial hair and after doing so his performance dropped off substantially and he claimed it was due to his now lack of facial hair and explained the need to have it to compliment his "psyche":

lookin' guuud.

"To be perfectly honest with ya, I feel that, I maybe have average physical ability, but when I get my psyche and my self-hypnosis goin', then I can compete with anybody and anything..."

-The "Mad Hungarian" Alan Thomas Hrabosky








The man's whole modus operandi was being wickedly wickedly pumped. Now, I'm gonna just go out and say it .... That is COOL. I would really like to know the procedure he used to self hypnotize himself into the Zone. For some reason I have a feeling it might have involved listening to the Doobie Brothers whilst drinking semi-warm Schaefer beer ... but that's just speculation on my part at this juncture.

  
Nextly, the Wizard of OZ! Ozzie Smith .... complete with GIFS OF HIM DOIN' FLIPS EVERYWHERE!!!!!

Wut the .... OH MY GOOOODNESS!

What is gonna ... OH WOW!

SLOOOO MOOOO SHUUUUNNNNN!

Ozzie don't, don't you're gonna get .... HE DID A BACK FLIP!!!

Sorry Al Hrabosky but you lose. Ozzie Smith is one of the mainest mainest mainest men of the 80s/90s. I, over the years, have equated happiness to doing back flips and Ozzie Smith would take the field by doing back flips. It's almost too much. It's .... the greatest thing.

So the award for my Most Favorite Cardinal of all time goes to ... Ozz....


......A CHALLENGER APPEARS!

OH NO!

Oh no, Willie ... no. No, I can't. I can't. I wrote a pretty long article about Willie McGee back in the day like five or six years ago. It was one of the first articles that got a lotta hits on my blog. It was a pseudo art review of photos of Willie McGee that went on for, I dunno, like 2000 words. It had a complete fictitious backstory, copy-pasted french poems, and everything else. I'm sorry, Willie, I can't include you in this one because I've done like thousands of words on the Subject of Willie McGee already. 

I can use the remainder of this space to work in a Dane Iorg joke or something .... Who am I kidding? Let's get Willie in this article.

People might have thought back in 2012 that I was making fun of Willie McGee in that "The Highest of High Culture: The Appraisal of Photographs of Willie McGee" piece. I wasn't. As a kid in the 1980s, photos of Willie McGee when found in various packs of baseball cards genuinely confused and intrigued me. I'd open a pack and flip through the cards and I'd be like ... "Oh a rookie card, cool", "YEAH! AN EXPO! YES!" ... and then ..... "????" .... total bewilderment and confusion.

I wasn't making fun of Willie's appearance in that 2012 piece, I honestly think Willie McGee baseball cards are art. They are. I would look at them and really wonder things like "What the heck is this dude thinking about to be making a face like this whilst getting his baseball card photo taken?" ... I mean if you made me choose what is the greatest baseball card of all time I'd say with perfect aplomb and genuine honesty that the 1986 Topps Willie McGee is the greatest baseball card of all time.

Players wanted to look cool, tough, professional, or snapped doing an interesting action/play in these cards ... but not Willie McGee. He wanted to take these photos with the most confounding facial expressions possible ... and they are just that ... confounding. I still think to this day that what Willie McGee is thinking about in his 1986 Topps trading card is ..... "Gee whiz .... that's a funny lookin' dog over there."

Ozzie Smith, I apologize, you're the greatest .... but the award for my Most Favoritist Cardinal of All Time goes to...

Willie Mcgee.

Conclusion

I like this article, it's pretty good.

Is Freshness the Reason Behind the Hate On for P.K. Subban?

A lot of people were wondering why the reigning Norris trophy winner and excellent hockey player P.K. Subban was benched during the Olympic games in Sochi.

I was excited to watch these games and was sort of disappointed that Subban only appeared in 11 minutes of one game during the entire tournament.

Everyone seems to hate on Subban all the time, all the time, over somewhat pointless things and I'm not sure I understand it.

One thing is for sure, he doesn't look like your average NHL player. He looks more like an athlete you'd find in the NBA, or NFL, or MLB than someone you'd find in the NHL. He's charismatic and flashy...he's rather Fresh, I'd say.

He has an urban flair to himself that is more common in other sports. The NBA especially has the most urban feel to it, The NBA has a sort of hip hop persona that gives it a lot of flavor. Urban freshness is not only accepted in the NBA but encouraged.

The NFL is the next most "fresh" sport, and even MLB baseball which was once regarded to be as "country club" a sport as golf has a had a major make over during the last five decades or so.

Yet even baseball shuns urban elements as not being part of its image. Take the case of Lastings Milledge who created a big hub-bub over releasing a rap album while in the Mets triple-A organization. (Article by Deadspin on Lasting's rap fiasco).

The writer in the article linked above states this would have caused no one to look twice if it were the NBA and Milledge was releasing a rap album, but baseball doesn't want "rap" in its image. It still sort of wants to retain a golf-esque country club atmosphere to its institution...which is odd considering only 63% of baseball players are still howdy doody white guys in the present era.

I don't know if anyone's really noticed...but there's not a whole lot of guys in the NHL who are not howdy doody farm boys. In fact Subban might be the only player in the NHL today who could be described as being "urban."

Which begs the question...


NHL: Fear of Freshness?

Is fear of freshness a real phobia that I didn't make up? Of course it is, it's called Chill-A-Phobia and it's not a made a up mental condition by any means.

The NHL comes across as being super uptight and lame...

Please read the following article: http://sports.nationalpost.com/2013/02/02/don-cherry-is-glad-to-see-the-end-of-the-p-k-subban-carey-price-triple-low-five/

It details the shocking behavior displayed by Subban which SHOCKED an entire nation. What did he do? Well, he had the nerve to dare to preform a "triple low five."

What is it? Well, as opposed to the "high five" which we are all familiar with, Subban and his teammate Carey Price would turn the high five upside-down and preform the greeting/soul-shake at a below-knee vantage point...and then had the audacity to multiply the quantity of the "fives" by three resulting in the aforementioned "triple low five."

Can you believe it? That someone would turn a high five upside down and raise the frequency by 2 units? It's....it's....it's....deplorable is what it is. I myself was shocked, amazed, and horrified (that so much could be so compromised).

The TLF was banned by the Canadiens organization in response to the collective shock that the nation felt whilst viewing this obscene gesture by Subban and Price.

Now if you're sitting there and thinking to yourself..."wait, what? All this fuss over a low-five? What the flying fuck?" then you are probably a good and normal person. Yet to truly understand the shock generated by this you really have to immerse yourself in the customs of the region to truly understand why this was such a huge deal.

Canada Itself: A Fear of Freshness?

It's time for some Canadian trivia !!

Didja know: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air starring Will Smith was originally banned in Canada? It's a fact jack.

Didja Know: Milk comes in these weird ass bags in Canada because Mennonites in Alberta believed milk in cartons promoted promiscuity and lobbied the government to outlaw milk in cartons? You can't make this shit up even if you tried.

Canada is kind of weird sometimes. Its leader for instance is an Evangelical Christian who doesn't believe in evolution. It can be sort of an odd place at times.

The average Canadian person spends their day cutting down trees or some thing like that, then at night they say their prayers to their beloved God, and then they fall asleep with pleasant dreams of painting the Queen of England's toe-nails.

They are a simple agrarian society who lead very boring lives. Hockey is the one saving grace that they can hope for. Hockey represents the golden ray of hope that every illiterate Canadian huckster can become a multi-millionaire.

Forget just millionaire, it's a way for an illiterate man to be appointed to government and live off tax payers money. For example, take Jacques Demers who is 100% illiterate but was appointed a senator and is now an official in the Canadian government. What other country on earth could you be both illiterate and a government official? Wow what a place!

The image the NHL is going for...is the Super Hoser image. The prototype is the illiterate good ole country boy who rose against all odds and made a million bucks and got his name into the hall of fame. You can do it too! Your illiterate in-bred son who drinks paint all day can have his name in the hall of fame too!

Now, P.K. Subban is the furthest thing from an illiterate in-bred country boy. Some might say he's even breaking the mold and adding a real urban flavor to the NHL...and most if not all hard-line traditionalists don't like this very much.

NHL: Time to Catch Up?

Look, there are seven big huge sports leagues in the Americas and their popularity and revenue go in this order:

1. NFL
2. MLB
3. Formula 1
4. NBA
5. PGA
6. CONMEBOL (South American Soccer League)
7. NHL
8. PGBA (Professional Girls Badmington Association)

The popularity of the NHL in the Americas is over-estimated at best by its fans. A new image really wouldn't hurt a silly ass league that makes a fuss about low-fivin'.

The only thing that sells the league right now is the fighting. If they took fighting out of hockey no one outside of 5 cities would ever go to any more games.

I've seen the NHL referred to on the internet as "furpuck" lately. It seems people are implying that if all sports were porno genres then the porno genre most comparable to the NHL would be a disturbing niche porn like furry porn. It's mean and I would never compare anything, even my worst enemy to furry porn (which is an abomination to the eyes and brain)...but I just want to point out that most people view the NHL as being super lame and with good reason.

I found the MLB's reaction to Lastings Milledge's rap album as being way over the top and silly...so I have a hard time understanding a league like the NHL who can't even handle "low fives" without getting their panties in a knot...it is almost unheard of to even think about how that's even possible.

In Conclusion

Now, this is a story all about how

Triple Low Fives turned the NHL upside down
And I like to take a minute
Just sit right there
I'll tell you how P.K. became the prince of the NHL

In west Ontario born and raised
On the playground was where he spent most of his days
Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool
And all shootin some slaphshots outside of the school
When a couple of guys
Who were up to no good
Startin being super lame in the neighborhood

I whistled for a cab and when it came near

The license plate said fresh and it had a CH in the mirror
If anything I can say this cab is rare
But I thought 'Now forget it' - 'Yo homes to Montréal'

I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8
And I yelled to the cabbie 'Yo homes smell ya later'
I looked at my kingdom
I was finally there
To sit on my throne as the Prince of The NHL

A little bit of freshness never hurt nobody. GO HABS GO! 

After 34 years the Serious Heart Attack Fires still Burn Strong...

Mr. Expo

The Spaceman Bill Lee called him "The Moderator of the Conclave," and the leader of the Montreal Expos teams of the glorious era of the late seventies and early eighties. This man in 1979 proclaimed that the Montreal Expos were "for real" and "as serious as a heart attack."

Who is he?

The legend...Warren Cromartie. Who else?

Today on April the 4th of 2012, almost 34 years after proclaiming to the world that the Montreal Expos are for real, he's back to let 'em know that even though they are gone...they are certainly not forgotten and may one day live once more. The Cro came back to Montreal to announce that he is heading a group who's purpose is to revive the Expos.

(press articles: 1. Video from the Gazette.com, 2. TVA Article, 3. TSN article)

Why do I care? Because baseball reminds me of a simpler time. When April came around in the old days it used to mean that I got to play baseball all day, watch Expos games at night, then read the boxscores in the mornings and absorb all those wonderful numbers into my brain. Now, I work all day long and don't have time to play baseball, the Expos are dead, and in the morning there's nothing to look at the in paper except boring political and business articles...no more boxscores. To each his own, you know? It reminds of a simpler time and it gave me something to believe in.

Circa 1979.....for real

Cro stated in his press conference that this has got to start at the "grassroots" and that it's gonna take a "unit" of people with a positive attitude. It's a baby-step but everything has to start somewhere...and if I may say, this baby-step is as serious as a heart attack!

The Montreal Baseball Project will be holding a charity golf tournament on June 15th, 2012 for the Cedar Cancer Institute and the MUHC in memory of the Great Legend Gary Carter who passed away earlier this year from brain cancer. The game will feature many of Carter's teammates of the 1981 Expos (including the Great Legend Tim Raines and the Great Legend Andre Dawson).

My Thoughts

People are saying that Montreal is too accustomed to big league attractions and will never support a minor league team, but I'm not sure about that. I think a minor league team could work here. Personally, I would use some Bill Veeck-ian gimmicks to sell the game. I would keep open 4 of the 25 roster spots for the following:

A) Two Quebec born players in order to have hometown players on the team for the fans to support.

B) Two women players in order to break some ground (this gimmick will get some headlines for sure)

The 21 roster slot system won't fly with the MLB players union, so a triple-A team (or any other MLB affiliated team) is not in the picture. The best idea would be a Can-Am team, where the Quebec Capitales play and thus a rivalry can start between Quebec City and Montreal. With a Can-Am team the 4 reserved roster slots for seat-filling reasons will be able to fly.

Who is the prime candidate to be the female star of the Montreal's hypothetical Can-Am team?

Eri Yoshida

Yoshida is a side-arm knuckleballer from Yokohama, Japan. She has pitched professionally against men on several occasions, including as a member of the Kobe 9 in Japan, and the Chico Outlaws in the U.S of A.

She has trained extensively with knuckleball sages such as Tim Wakefield and seems to have perfected the technique at a very young age. Some claim she has mastered 36 divine deception techniques and 72 earthly ones, giving her more than enough deceptive notes in her pitch sequence to fool almost any batter.

Would Yoshida sign on to pitch for a Cromartie led Montreal minor league franchise? Yes, she would in a heart beat. The Cro is a MUCH BIGGER legend in Japan than he is in North America and is a baseball icon over there.

I think women would flock to see her throw and make men look foolish with her deceptive knuckleball, I think she would be an instant-star in Montreal.

Montreal was where the first black player gained confidence to smash the color barrier in Major League Baseball...could it be the place where the first woman player gains the confidence to strike out men in Major League Baseball? I don't know...I think it would sell tickets though.

I want to catch baseball fever again...