Tom-a-Hawk Chump!

As I am waiting for the Cards score to come up on Baseball Tonight, I notice that the new Busch was getting destroyed by Mama Nature. The tarp flew into the stands (which makes the Florida Marlins' groundcrew look like Martha Stewart) and the plexiglass from the pressbox fell into the crowd and back into the pressbox. If I could only hear a drunken Mike Shannon during a rain delay when the plexiglass falls on him ("Holy Shit John, there are shards of some sort of clear, sharp substance that fell in my ice cold Budweiser. Hehehe").

If you think about the past ten years, most of the strange games that the Cards have played have been against the Braves. If you remember, the horrible Felix Jose led Cards were in Hotlanta in '93 when Fulton County Stadium damn near burnt to the ground during batting practice. The game was delayed for a couple hours, and all Channel 11 showed was the burnt out box. I remember this as being one of the Crime Dog's first games for the Braves and he crushed a ball that went upperdeck in the old park. Tom Emanski called right after the game and signed Fred up for a lifetime contract complete with baby blue hats and wristbands.

I believe it was '92 this time at Busch, where after about a three hour rain delay and the Braves up by 9 or 10 in the 7th, I watched Juan Berenguer (my RBI Baseball nemisis) trot his fat ass out past the leftfield foul line and promptly trip over the pitchers mound. For a minute, I ponder if Berenguer had gone out and partied with Pedro Guerrero the night before who had a sugar bugar staking claim to his mustache (this is the mind of a 10 year old). This must have been the sign that Joe Torre needed because the Cards promptly scored seven runs in 2/3 of an inning and come back to win with a game winning hit by Todd Zeile off Mark Wohlers.







"Joe Rogan, Let me tell you something you might not know...I smoke rocks"



And in the 2000 playoffs, we see our top prospect self destruct. In the past eight seasons or so, the Cardinals had the absolute worst farm system since Branch Rickey created the damn thing. Our top prospects coming up were Manny Aybar, Eli Marrero, Jose Jiminez, and a young man from Florida named Rick Ankiel. Ankiel, who had pretty good regular season, decided to give up on life during the first game of the playoffs. It was controversial to start slick Rick since Darryl Kile had won 20 games that season, but LaRussa went with Ankiel. He promptly walked the first four batters and decided to aim for the backstop for the rest of his pitching career. Hello Quad Cities!

You really can't blame the last ten years on the Braves. Ever since Donovan Osbourne laid a turd in Game 7 of the '96 NLCS, the Cardinals have owned the Braves in big games. About the only thing that hasn't happened in a Cards/Braves game: a sumo match between Bobby Cox and Whitey Herzog.