i noted yesterday that the cards' reg'r season wins vs the astros don't count in the playoffs. thankfully, the same thing holds true for the losses.
anyway, i saw what i wanted to see out of morris last night -- he was in the strike zone all night and getting outs. marquis pitched well too -- threw strikes, pitched aggressively, and got ground balls. gave up a dinger? yeah, but we already knew he was vulnerable.
for that matter, we already knew the cardinals were vulnerable vs the astros. if they do face houston in the nlcs, they are going to lose games like this one -- tightly pitched contests where a couple of jacks make the diff'nce. that's how the entire series went last season, you may recall -- the deciding runs scored on homers in six of the seven games (all but game 1). so last night's game was both an echo of last october and, perhaps, a foreshadowing of some 2005 nlcs games. hopefully no more than three on'm.
i'm less disappointed by the loss than i am by the news, as reported by david pinto, that the all-but-inevitable stl-sd series will follow the retarded tuesday-thursday-saturday schedule -- which means peavy can pitch game 1 and game 4 on normal rest. motherf**ker -- as if playoff inclusion itself isn't enough of a gift to a .500 team. nothing to do i guess but go out and beat the guy; the cards have been indiff'nt to circumstance all season long, dealt with each obstacle and found a way over or around it. so here's another little roadblock, and another occasion to buckle up and blast on through . . . . . we'll find out very soon how the vehicle has weathered a season's worth of nicks scrapes and dents -- and a month's worth of rust.
washington post ran a long article yesterday about the cards' departure from the mighty MOX. i didn't see that the p-d picked it up. anyway, the wapo web site is registration required, but if you haven't registered it's worth it for this article alone.
i'll be back w more this afternoon -- had an urpy kid last night, and it's knocked me off my usual rigid, lock-step time-management regimen . . . . .