A glance at the major league transactions for the last week will not find the following: "The St. Louis Cardinals activated Albert Pujols from the inactive list." It just feels that way.
Cards fans have gotten so used to the unprecedented consistent excellence from the 10-year veteran Pujols, that the first baseman's .260 start with average power this season seemed just pitiful. Lest the Cards fans forget, Pujols is playing for a contract in the first time in his professional career, has offered to play third base (and has done so quite well), and, oh yeah, he's actually human.
For all those fans who have been quick to point to a spiral of career decline for Pujols, King Albert provided a powerful rebuttal, reminding all fans that Aubrey Huff's four homers in a series was Pujols-like, not the other way around. In the most dramatic fashion possible, Pujols changed the dynamics of his season in a little under 24 hours, from a dumpster dive type of walk year, to another season in which his name will be mentioned prominently in the Most Valuable Player conversations for the National League. Pujols' back-to-back extra inning walk off homers buoyed a team missing it's top pitcher, Adam Wainwright, it's top paid position player, Matt Holliday, and a team which came into a weekend series with a bullpen on fumes.
All this against the team most favored by conspiracy theorists to earn Albert's services after this year, the Chicago Cubs....what a delicious appetizer Albert provided the Cards fans this weekend. With Holliday on the disabled list another 12 days, with Lance Berkman ailed by a sore wrist, with surprising starting pitcher on the disabled list among others, Albert hoisted the Cards on his ample shoulders and said to the rest of the baseball world that he is still the Mang....
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About those Cubs....they no longer feel like America's lovable losers. Even the Northsider's most faithful fans have given up on this team, which, while not unusual for June, is notable because most Cubs fans are particularly discouraged by the level of ineptitude of this ballclub. Cub fans knew that the Cubs were facing a year of rebuilding because of a litany of historically bad contracts asigned by Cubs management to underperforming players such as Alphonso Soriano, Carlos Zambrano, and Kosuke Fukudome. But hope remained eternal because of young shortstop Starlin Castro, the signing of Carlos Pena to play first base, the acquisition of power starting pitcher Matt Garza, and some power arms in the bullpen, augmented by the return of longtime Chicago fan favorite, Kerry Wood. The Cubs may also have a closer with the best pure stuff of any closer in baseball, the electric Carlos Marmol.
But just about everything south of Darwin Barney has gone putrid for these Cubs. Staff ace Ryan Dempster has an ERA approaching six and a half, Fukudome has 6 runs batted in in a third of a season, promising outfielder Tyler Colvin is batting well below .100, Pena and Garza have not played at the championship caliber that they showed in Tampa, and injuries have exposed a lack of organizational depth for the Chicago team. First year manager Mike Quade looks like a beaten man.
And now Carlos Zambrano is showing the always anticipated stress cracks after having his last two starts lost late by Marmol.....
Not much to look forward to, and with the overpriced veterans failing to perform, this team isn't even one that those who bleed Cubbie blue can enjoy watching.
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I picked the Miami Heat to win the NBA Finals in 5 games, and while that may still happen, the first 3 games of the series have been so tightly contested to provide terrific entertainment value. If four more games are played like these first three, this will go down as the best Finals in league history, and quite possibly the greatest final series in the history of North American sports championships....especially so given the lack of popularity of Miami's ill-begotten All-Star team.
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Speaking of popularity, I know this opine is in the minority, but I so much more enjoy America's Got Talent than American Idol....just something about the variety of talent acts as well as the utter stupidity of some of the acts that make the show so much more fun to watch. That and Howie Mandel has just so much darned charisma....
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Back to baseball for just a bit: Why do major league baseball players, as a group, feel so compelled to have to make a fashion statement with some of the worst facial hair ever seen? This year the grill-dos are especially bad. Don't these guys have wives and girl-friends (and grandmothers) who care about appearance? Or do they just put up with it because of the direct deposits on the 1st and the 15th?
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Two changes I absolutely love in college sports: baseball toning down the juice within the aluminum bats, creating a more balanced game, and softball creating a more balanced game by moving the pitcher's plate back three feet. No one wants to see NCAA tournament baseball games played to the tune of 20-16 when pitching is worn thin by double elimination play, and no one wants to see scoreless games in the 15th inning of softball games, either. Kudos to the sport administrators. Now about that stupid BCS-thing in football....
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