I got back Monday night from a weekend trip to visit the family. My girlfriend, who is from Italy, and hasn't completely learned the ins and outs of baseball yet, initiated the following dialogue with me
her: I missed you enough that I actually read a baseball article while you were gone
me: Oh, that's cool
her: This article from may claims that the Cardinals are going to have problems with the rotation... is that still true?
[Explanation of the injury to Carp and the parade of 10,000 relievers in the rotation ensues]
her: Oh, and one other thing, I kept on reading references to this thing called the DH, what's that?
me: The Designated Hitter--in the American league, the pitcher doesn't bat, and they have this guy in the lineup who does nothing but bat, in the pitchers' stead.
her: That's stupid.
Getting that immediate, direct response from her was truly overjoying to me. I know that the DH is going nowhere, but I still hate it, and I will still rail against it at every chance that I get.
So, the second eleven inning game in as many days turns out on the positive side. My Mlb.tv feed died out sometime around the 4th inning (or the coffee shop I was at decided to start cutting off my bandwidth), but it is plenty encouraging to see Wellemeyer start to mature as a pitcher--it seems like he's changed his game a bit in the last couple of his starts--trusting his fastball more, chaning location more often as a means to keep batters off of balance, rather than trying to go to his inferior stuff so often. It's the approach that we've seen so often called for with respect to Anthony Reyes, but, all of a sudden it seems to be working, at least over a one wee span for the two headed monster of Well(s)(emeyer).