Morning, everyone. I'm going to have to apologise in advance, but I don't have a full post ready to go today.
I had begun writing another draft preview early this morning, right around 4:40, with the intention of having it done by 7:00 or 7:30. Sadly, life has intervened and forced me to attend to other matters today. To quote Bon Iver, ain't that just like the present, to keep showing up like this? I might have time to write a preview, but considering the game today begins at 10:55 CDT, I've decided discretion to be the better part of valour and am offering you only an open game thread in hopes of appeasement. Just call me Baron Chamberlain.
I do bring a few notes, oddities, and a playlist. I hope it will be enough to slake your collective thirst.
-- David Freese is official. Yawn. Actually, I suppose I shouldn't yawn at this; it's encouraging to see a homegrown filler at such a position of weakness last season. The fact the Cardinals can plug a player, no matter how unproven, into the hole at third rather than try to buy a solution, is all the proof you should ever need the Cards' minor league operation is doing its job. The question of whether they're doing the best job they could be doing is another matter, of course, but the 2010 Cardinals will feature homegrown talent at third, shortstop, second, first, catcher, center field, and two of the five rotation spots. Draw your own conclusions.
-- When I was very little, I had a great-aunt who was extremely superstitious. In particular, she was superstitious about pennies; we were never to pick up a penny lying face down for fear we would get bad luck instead of good, etc. What was really odd, though, and something I've never seen anyone else do, is she would leave pennies for other people to find. Any time she bought something and received pennies in change, she would hide one somewhere, always face up, of course, for someone to happen along and find, thus receiving their own good luck.(I say hide, but she would really just leave it in an out of the way spot.) Sort of a weird old lady version of paying it forward, I suppose.
To this day, every time I purchase something and receive a penny in change, I'll leave one somewhere. Don't ask me why, but I do. I went to QT this morning to buy a Yoo-hoo, and on my way out of the station I took one of my two pennies and left it on top of the trashcan by the entrance. And as I walked back to the car, I suddenly wondered something I've never wondered before: what if a person needed a penny to pay for $10.01 in gas and found that penny? Would finding a penny to pay for the one cent you ran over count as the luck granted by the penny? What I'm asking is whether finding the penny could be the good luck you receive from finding the penny, or would the penny give you extra luck due to finding it even though finding it was good luck anyway?
-- Jason LaRue is going to have a CT scan today to try and determine if he has a fracture in his hand. Seriously, I posted one effing picture of LaRue and now we're looking at Gagnozzi starting? I don't think the punishment even remotely fits the crime here. This is like punishing cheating on the ACT with dismemberment.
-- Do you ever sit around your house and start to wonder if you would be able to tell if it were bugged? And then you start looking really closely at your mirrors and checking lamps and stuff to see if maybe you've already been bugged and just don't know it? I can't possibly be the only one who's ever done that. (On a related note, I now have the cleanest back of an armoire you've ever seen in your life.)
-- I'm trying desperately not to worry about Carpenter, but his performance yesterday -- specifically the six walks -- has me a bit rattled, I'll admit. Such a lack of command was literally the last thing I expected to see from him. I barely followed the game while it was going on, so it may have been a case of a bad ump or something else; perhaps someone here can enlighten me. If not, though, yikes.
That's all I've got at the moment. I'll be back next week with a slate of draftees, all of them 'swinging for the fences' types -- super high-reward high school players. I do apologise again for this half-assed posting. Take care of yourselves.
The Baron's Playlist for the 31st of March, 2010 -- New!
"Round and Round" - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
"Swim Until You Can't See Land" - Frightened Rabbit
"Jail La La" - Dum Dum Girls
"Shame, Shame" - Dr. Dog
"Be and Bring Me Home" - Roky Erikson and Okkervil River (no, that's not a typo)