The robot is attending a human wedding this week, which means I am your Sunday host. Except I am also away from internet access. Luckily, I've been meaning to plug my book one final time (probably), so this all matches up perfectly. To thank all of you for bearing with my while I plug The Ultimate Cardinals Record Book over and over while also plugging it one more time, and to refresh my 13-year-old knowledge of HTML, I've put up an excerpt for your perusal at this link. It's Chapter 11, starring Silver King and talking about unbreakable records.

Unfortunately: It only works in WebKit browsers—Chrome and Safari and the Android browser, among others—because I went a little overboard on the weird experimental HTML. My apologies for that. It mostly works in Firefox, except that the table turns into one big, vertical list. In Internet Explorer 9 it probably doesn't work at all, and in Internet Explorer 10 I have no idea.

Anyway: I hope you enjoy it. If you're using something other than Chrome or Safari, or you just hate CSS 3 columns, I've reproduced the main part of the chapter—sans table and sidebars—after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

For three years the Maple Street Press Cardinals Annual was a reliable sign of spring—a preseason magazine devoted entirely to St. Louis Cardinals baseball, in all its forms—and last year, as we began writing the new edition, it looked like this year would be no different. Then, in September, we learned our publisher had gone under—there'd be no Maple Street Press Cardinals 2012. With the content that was already in development, the series editor—former Viva El Birdos manager Larry Borowsky—decided to push forward on an ebook that would carry on the series's format and ideas. That's how the 2012 Viva El Birdos Baseball Annual, available now, was born.

Articles from Larry Borowsky, Dan Moore, Aaron Schafer, Kary Booher, and Tim McCullough look at everything from history—the Steve Carlton trade, 40 years later, the Cardinals' inability to develop shortstops since Garry Templeton—to life without Albert Pujols, with in-depth analysis about top prospects like Matt Adams and Tyrell Jenkins for good measure. Click here for a complete table of contents.

The Viva El Birdos Baseball Annual isn't illustrated like the Maple Street Press Cardinals books were—that's something we're looking at for next year—but it features all the analysis, history, interviews, and predictions the magazines were known for.

The 2012 Vive El Birdos Baseball Annual is available in ebook form for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and even your computer, with a free browser plug-in—to order directly from us for $2.99, click the format you want to be transferred to a secure store, where your copy will instantly download.

The Maple Street Press books were edited with one thing in mind: To put the best Cardinals writing together, regardless of topic, and get it to as many people as possible. Our goal for the VEB Annual is the same, and if you loved the MSP series we hope you'll give it a shot.

To order for the Kindle, use this button:

To order for iPad, Nook, or browser plug-in, use this button:

Step two in my ongoing quest to see how much self-promotion I'm comfortable with is available today, for $2.99 on Kindle, Nook, iPad/iPhone, Android, or anything else that can read an EPUB file, including your web browser: The 2012 Viva El Birdos Baseball Annual, brought to you by some of the writers and editors of the sadly defunct Maple Street Press annuals.

Edited by Larry Borowsky (you might know him, without capital letters, as lboros) and I, this year's edition features a long interview with Mike Matheny, an extended season preview—complete with even longer and more passive-aggressive player capsules than usual—from me, and the following articles from some people you will recognize:

• Larry's "On the Brink: A Brief History of World Series Last Chances" is a not-actually-that-brief look at how and how often players have found themselves in the situation in which David Freese and Lance Berkman both excelled in Game 6.
  
  It includes more and more interesting words about Debs "Tex" Garms, the ex-retired 36-year-old who had the misfortune of coming up in the 1943 World Series with nothing standing between his Cardinals and elimination, than you are likely to have read before.
• "Two Piece: Just STFU About GIDPs," by Aaron Schafer (you might know him, with a weekly playlist, as the red baron), takes a look at the 2011 Cardinals' proclivity for grounding into double plays, and reminds us just how lucky we are that the Cardinals made the postseason, thereby keeping us from an offseason in which those double plays were imagined to be a problem that needed correcting.
• "Coming to Power: Yadi Muscles Up" is a timely look at Yadier Molina's sudden surge in slugging percentage, and whether it will help, say, make him worth $75 million between 2013 and 2017, including an attempt to find similarly punchless hitters who permanently found the line-drive gospel.
• "Rising Tide: Rah, Rah for the Farm System," also by Aaron (you may know him as the guy I identified as the red baron), looks at the best farm system the Cardinals have had since Rick Ankiel was—I'm sorry, I just started crying. Anyway, it, it—it goes farm-team-by-farm-team, looking for future contributors.
• Kary Booher of the Springfield News-Leader talks to and about Matt Adams, who explains why he chose baseball over football, and goes as far afield as Adams's school district's athletic director to paint a full picture of the Cardinals' most football-sized hitting prospect.
• Meanwhile, Tim McCullough, who programmed VEB and Future Redbirds prospect-sifting robot azruavatar (you may know him, inaccurately, as the red baron), does the same trick with teenaged pitching prospect Tyrell Jenkins, combining an interview, a scouting report, and a look at the way the Johnson City Cardinals do things to give us a fuller picture of the Cardinals' best pitching prospect not named Shelby or Carlos.
• "The Shortstops of Futures Past," which might well be a cautionary tale to Ryan Jackson, traces the Cardinals' failed and foiled homegrown shortstop prospects all the way back to Garry Templeton, from 1975 second-rounder Kelly Paris to Tripp Cromer and Aaron Holbert to Pete Kozma.
• Finally, as the Steve Carlton trade turns 40, a look back at what turned out to be one of the most ill-advised trades in Cardinals history—and an attempt to see it, one more time, without the benefit of hindsight (and with the benefit of Marcel projections.)

All that runs you $2.99; you can order one directly from us here. If you don't own an e-reader or tablet, you can download the free Epub Reader plug-in for Firefox and read the magazine on your computer. As Larry writes in the introduction, this is an experiment, one we were thrown into without time or warning. But we think it's turned out well, and I know the content's great—and I can say that because I didn't write most of it.

A more conventional morning/game thread will run in this space at noon. (I can say that because, for once, I've actually written it already!)

Friends and readers: As you might have noticed on the sidebar, a book I wrote is coming out on March 1. Today: I plug it. (Note: A non-plug post is scheduled to pop up in this space around one.) What follows is some questions I have arbitrarily decided you've frequently asked about The Ultimate Cardinals Record Book, which sits at this writing as among the most 125,000 talked-about books in the entire world.

1. Where can I buy The Ultimate Cardinals Record Book?

You could click on this Amazon link, if you're especially eager. After it comes out you could look in a bookstore, if you're in range of a bookstore with a local sports section. Triumph, the publisher, is also responsible for Derrick Goold's 100 Things Cardinal Fans Should Know and Do before They Die, so if you've seen that somewhere, look to its right or left.

2. Is it really the ultimate record book about the Cardinals?

It's actually the Cardinals volume of the Ultimate Record Book series. It's kind of a Nippon Ham-Fighters/Nippon-Ham Fighters situation—though if, after reading it, you find it the best record book you've ever read about the Cardinals you're welcome to consider the possibility.

3. What's inside?

Chapters about big names in Cardinals history—Stan Musial, Albert Pujols, Bob Gibson, Bob Caruthers (shut up) and the like—a ton of shorter sidebars and boxes about not-quite-as-big-names, events, and happenings in Cardinals history, and lots of all-time team leaderboards. It's the kind of book designed to be read at random intervals, in random order; more specifically, it's set up a lot like the Yankees version, only I do not once say "Joe DiMaggio."

Continue reading this post »