<p>Oh cmon how did the nats blow their huge lead. I thought the cards were done</p>
<p>Old news there bleach340… the Cardinals scored 4 in the 9th Friday night to win the NLDS. They had a Happy Flight! out to San Fran…</p>
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<p>A curse, perhaps?</p>
<p>I am just sick about it. :(</p>
<p>Wait 15 years for a team (since I moved into the area) and then this.</p>
<p>Hope the Giants don’t think they can lose game 2 and go down 0-2 (like they did against the Reds) and still beat the Cards. That Cardinal bullpen is TOUGH! Let’s go Giants!!</p>
<p>So far, I’m “singing” the praises of Ryan Vogelsong, the Giants starting pitcher!</p>
<p>Great job Vogelsong and the relievers…We needed a home win. Go Giants!</p>
<p>Anyone care to comment on the slide by Matt Holliday that injured Marco Scutaro? I thought it was excessive but I’m sure Cardinal fans will disagree.</p>
<p>It definitely was excessive. Baseball lacks a mechanism for dealing with this kind of play. The rules are set up in the expectation that the players will on their own stay within allowable bounds. Other sports are set up with rules to limit what is allowable - in the expectation the players will push the limits - and thus have penalties. Baseball only has ejection. Holliday should have been ejected, but the system doesn’t comprehend a play that’s so dangerous. Even when a guy throws at someone’s head, the usual way is a warning - to both teams - followed by ejection of the next offender. This means you know as a player you can get away with things and that leads to such dangerous plays as that one. The baseball system usually works for that sport but it needs to be revised to punish dangerous play.</p>
<p>Kicking a player in the head during a brawl does not consistute ejection, but a hard slide that went too far does? Really?</p>
<p>It’s a part of the game and you’d think Will Clark would know that. But maybe he’s suffering from amnesia or something…</p>
<p>Wow. That was absolutely dirty. I will never understand how an athlete could want to intentionally hurt another athlete. It just goes against my athlete’s “code”. If you need to play dirty to win, you’re pathetic.</p>
<p>Not tonight, Ibanez!!!</p>
<p>^ OMG. I just died laughing.</p>
<p>It isn’t that an athlete - like Holliday - wants to hurt the other guy but that the conduct is dangerous. But baseball lacks penalties. If a guy “slides” over the bag like that - not into the bag but intentionally past and literally over the top of the bag - he’s doing something very dangerous. In the old days, a fight would break out immediately. This is how Ty Cobb made so much of his reputation; he’d come in high with spikes up to make the defender worry more about safety than making the throw. In the baseball tradition, the Giants should have gone after Holliday immediately. That would have caused a bunch of ejections but it would have sent the clear message that this kind of play is wrong. Baseball worked hard to get this kind of thing out of the game and it took decades to do that so now they have no mechanism at all to handle incidents like this. </p>
<p>BTW, I also feel very strongly that plays where the runner barrels into the catcher should also be banned. It is extremely dangerous - see Buster Posey’s leg breaking last year. Imagine if the 3rd baseman had the ball and a runner was coming at him and didn’t slide but instead smashed into him. There would be a huge outcry; the runner is expected to slide or try to evade a tag or simply give up and admit he was caught. Home plate should be same. Note that this kind of play wasn’t acceptable in bygone days. It became part of the game in, as I remember, the 1970’s and became famous as a tactic when Pete Rose smashed into Ray Fosse in the 1970 AllStar Game, separating Fosse’s shoulder.</p>
<p>Looking for Max Scherzer to put the Yankees out of their misery tonight.</p>
<p>Nah, CC will get them their ONE win. then it’s time to go home I fear.</p>
<p>Sweep em up Tigers, sweep em up :)</p>
<p>^^Bless You Boys!!!^^</p>
<p>Pretty national anthem in St. Louis by Joe Nichols, who apparently is a country music superstar but I’d never heard of him. :)</p>
<p>CC is a good pitcher, but he can’t do anything about those Yankee bats. They’re in a horrendous funk. Verlander was nowhere near having his best stuff last night; he had some trouble locating his fastball and left quite a few of them up and out over the plate, along with a few hanging breaking balls, but all the Yankee hitters could do was pop them up or hit meek ground balls right at someone. If Scherzer’s on, Tigers win, even if CC pitches a strong game which I expect him to do.</p>
<p>What I thought was amazing was the three-part harmony national anthem in San Francisco by Bobby Weir, Phil Lesh, and the Giants’ third-base coach. Apparently they’ve been doing that periodically for a few years. It’s one of the nicest Star-Spangled Banners I’ve ever heard.</p>