You can see the video here.  read the story here. 

Apparently the Park will get an artistic upgrade along the North side of the stadium as giant silver baseballs are to be placed outside the stadium.  the baseballs will be displayed in a way that one direction looks like a sinking fastball being thrown, the other direction will look like a line drive off a bat.  Pretty cool. And i find it hilarious that there isn't any media coverage while they artists/construction workers were adding it to the stadium (probly cuz it was too cold).

News article: Dickson took the honors of being voted by the fans as the best AAA starter in 2010 with over 55% of the vote.

as the article states, he was the only nominee that didn't receive a callup this year (i would think because he wasn't on the 40-man roster)

MiLB has already posted the results for best pitcher and hitter, but reliever is going on now followed by best game and best team later in october

• Best Reliever — voting is now
• Best Game — Oct. 18-25
• Best Team — Oct. 25-Nov. 1

I'm all for yelling, swearing when something goes right during a ballgame for the team, you get full of the excitement and you yell something, anything, cause your happy (same thing probably happens more frequently when the team make a mistake of course)

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=10785271
EDIT 8/10: MLB.com decided to update the video and put the KTRS call in there instead of FSN (most likely due to the audio), so i apologize for anyone who clicks on it as of 8/10 and can't hear the TV audio from the replay.

The condensed game does have it at the 3:40 mark http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=10799751

(makes you wonder from now on if you ever see a replay on MLB.com using radio audio instead of tv since tv pics up words from players on the field.

Here's the skip schumaker grand slam against the Reds on Aug 9, you can clearly hear someone yelling "Get outta here you f*cker!"

my question is is that carpenter yelling it?  I think it is because mics don't pick up individual fans yelling when the entire crowd is making noise on a big play, Carp was in the on-deck circle so he's closer to camera mics, it does sound like carp's voice, and we all know how much carp is zoned into the game when he's playing.

here's carpenter yelling when he got hit by a pitch (clearly yelling "mother f*cker") in arizona for comparison for both voice and sound quality of being picked up while on the field (compared to a fan being picked up by a mic over other fans): http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=7584175

This has to be the most ridiculous article i've ever read.

Bill McClellan Is a writer for the post dispatch, he doesn't write often about sports (mostly because he's no st louis sports fan) and often writes about some breaking news stories, economy, politics, etc.  And some of his articles i've read have been pretty decent reads.  But his article on the subject of trading Pujols is utterly mad.

I can see some people eyeing that if there is a chance pujols goes to free agency and goes somewhere for the money, St. Louis probably wouldn't be the #1 money place, so why not trade him for money saving prospects instead of losing him to free agency.  But this isn't just a franchise player we're talking about.  It's Albert Pujols, easily the best player of the last decade and one of the greatest baseball players of all time.  The last thing the cardinals front office wants is the worst public relations move ever made in franchise history by moving pujols.

The article is laughable as Mcclellan writes about pujols' numbers going down as he's having a "down year" but-every-other-player-wishes-he-has-pujols'-numbers, and believes a straight up trade of PUJOLS FOR ZAMBRANO is well worth the trade.

Does McClellan not know about Zambrano?  Does he not know what's happened with his numbers in his last 3 years of pitching?  Does he not know about Zambrano being a CANCER to that clubhouse and being put on the restricted list by the Cubs?

To belittle Pujols' numbers, suggesting he's going downhill, say he's a bit of a hot head and not even mention Zambrano's clubhouse actions and then say Pujols should be traded to the CUBS is utterly disgraceful to any cardinals fan, and anyone who reads the St. Louis Post Dispatch

here's the MLB.com article

good to see a cardinal going to my 2nd fav team (along with marquis but i don't think too many people like to talk about marquis' cardinal years here)

it's a low cost move with some potential rewards if Duncan is fully healthy from all the injuries he had with the cardinals off and on the last 2+ years, providing some pop off the bench as a lefty, and backup 1B and....*cough* backup corner OF.

Seriously, that picture of Duncan is in the 2010 cardinals calendar, talk about a bad pic (you'd think the people in charge of the calendars would have a better understanding of who's on the team when they put these things together, unless they put the pics in the calendars in....May for the next year, Greene, Piniero & Thurston are also on the calendar, but not Holliday)

well it turns out the cubs called up So taguchi, so we may see him in cubbie blue sometime over teh weekend series.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/cardinals/story/7764B6D5CBCDC41786257634005AAFEF?OpenDocument

i feel bad for so, granted he's a 5th OF at best and with september call ups he's more like a 6th since he's past 40.  But he had a great few years here as a 4th/5th OF with enough fans liking him to get a cards shirt with his name and number on 'em (i don't really recall any other 4th OF on any team that has a t-shirt jersey of the player you could buy at stores)

Love him or hate him, he was a great part of the '06 run, especially the NLCS.  (i still think yadi should of got series mvp over suppan but oh well)

you gotta love his quotes too "I don't have any friends in Chicago, so I thought it was a wrong number."  He's a true cardinals player.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/sep/10/redbirds-win-game-1-pcl-playoffs/

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/sep/11/redbirds-rally-take-2-0-lead/

Jaime Garcia started game 1, did well only allowing 1 unearned run on 1 hit, (I can't believe there was a 2 1/2 hour rain delay in NEW MEXICO!) very pleased to see he's pitching well, i hope he'll come to spring training strong and make a case for the #5 starter, we need a decent lefty starter, haven't had one of those since......Mulder, year 1.

Game 3 is in Memphis today (friday) here's hoping the redbirds get the sweep so we can start calling up guys (or do they still have to play the AAA national championship against the IL winners?)

Never Forget.

Liked reading this post in the Nats' news section at mlb.com

here's the link

he says TLR turned his career around, all with just playing 2 months for the guy, nice piece that shows that TLR can turn players around, and as we all know, Dave Duncan can turn pitchers around as well.  Even though lopez isn't the best fielder, he did provide a great bat for us down the stretch and even though skip is suberb as he can be at 2nd, when the offseason came around i was hoping to get lopez back for a year.

Did anyone check out the Top Pick 2009 videos on mlb.com

the "race" is between pujols and hanley ramirez for the top pick, and you can vote on the site too, i think pujols has a pretty good lead over ramirez (go vote)

But did you see the videos they made for the top picks?  They seem like crappy political commercials you see on tv during campaign time, really stupid too.

I especially think hanley's ad is pathetic, it says to not be fooled by Pujols' OBP of .462 last year because his "off-base percentage" was .538 so why would you vote for someone who's off base 54% of the time

And i'm like, "wait a minute, Ramirez had worse OBP than pujols had last year, what the heck is this "ad" saying?"

It just seems really stupid and even though it's just a vote, it's a really dumb idea to have campaign ads that are completely pointless.

I gotta say, i miss Julian Tavarez playing for the Cards.  Even though we never used him as a starter i still liked him in the pen. his year in 2004 was great (proving that dave duncan's skills with pitchers just somehow brings the best out of most of the pitchers he meets.....most)

I personally think julian is one of the most off the wall players in the game today when he's not pitching, and even though i hated it when he went to boston, i'm of course glad he signed with the nats, even though i'm not too happy with the way he went about it.  600 pound J-Lo ha!

There is this video i watched on youtube with papelbon trying to speak spanish with julian helping him off camera back in 08.  Julian's comments are hilarious to listen to in the background, and papelbon's thick louisiana accent trying to speak spanish is great.

This is just a shout out to any baseball fans around here (wonder how many are on this site) that the St. Louis National Adult Baseball Association is having their All-star game at GCS Ballpark in Sauget, IL (home of the grizzlies) on Sunday the 20th starting at 6:00 (it's after the cards afternoon game so you're not missing the game)

This is a charity event for the St. Louis Childrens hospital, with donations of any amount going to a good cause.

my buddy azruavatar posted about this last week (thanks T.M.) and I'm just trying to get the word out to anyone that wants to have fun at the ballpark with friends and family.

We're going to have several prizes, including gift cards to various restaurants, golf courses and other places around the st louis area (just check out the sponsors) and we're going to have a silent auction for various items.

~B.P.
Big River Blues Manager

I've always looked around baseball news to see if teams designate a player for assignment, and see if they have anything to offer (or if they were designated for a bad outing that can happen to rookies/the team traded for a new player and needed to make room) especially pitchers because, in all honesty, you can never have too many pitchers for your minor league teams.

There are a few names that caught my eye this week.

Fernando Hernandez (stats) from the A's
Bryan Corey (stats) From the Red Sox
Calvin Medlock (stats) From the Rays

I like Medlock's and Hernandez' stats and that they're both young minor leaguers.  The bad thing about hernandez is he was a rule-5 draft from the white sox, so he has to stay on a major league roster, and i believe the best rule-5 draft kind of players are ones used as backup catchers or 5th outfielders (like Barton) that aren't needed on a consistent basis like relievers are.

Medlock looks like a good middle relief kind of pitcher will a good fastball, curve combo.

Corey is older but the only one of the three with major league experience but has done well up in the bigs, not a large sample size though.

I'd prefer one of these guys over some of the old pitchers in memphis, like wasdin and politte, need to keep the youth movement going.

What do you guys think? (or have anyone else the club should look into for minor leaguers)

how do you guys feel about the cardinals' spring training and how they'll start the 08 season?

I'm normally overly optimistic, believing that pujols will hit at least 8 homers in april, ankiel and molina having decent OBPs of .330 and .340, kennedy coming back to his 05/06 numbers and a .350 OBP with Glaus and Duncan having about 5 homers each and OBPs around .355.  Izturis being horrible and hopefully replaced by ryan or miles (can't believe miles is better than someone) by the end of the month.  And a RF triangle between schumaker, barton and Ludwick depending on if we face a lefty starter/who becomes a good leadoff hitter.

Pitching-wise, Wainwright being an ace with an era around/less than 3 with Looper, Loshe and Reyes doing decently in the 2-3-4 spots (maybe not looper) with the 5th spot being bounced around between either welly or thompson before clement/piniero show up healthy.  And the bullpen is the bullpen, izzy will do fine along with the regulars; springer, franklin, flores, villone, with the remaining slots going to younger guys, especially either jimenez or perez.

I am not very pleased with whoever is writing the rotoworld "news" that pops up on the side bar.  If whoever writes the news belittles other teams as well I guess there's nothing to do about it.  I set up a poll to see if any other users would like to get rid of it or to get something else besides what we got. I know some people have commented about it so I decided to make an entry where everyone can discuss it.