Bruiser Chong

It's not his fault Pat Borders' dumb ass tried to backhand a ball in the dirt. The Goats: Nathan and Borders. The Twins are a greta team, they surprised the hell out of me. They deserve all fo the credit in the world. So I guess we'll just ignore Juan Rincon, who gave up four runs, which wound up making all the difference?

It's not his fault Pat Borders' dumb ass tried to backhand a ball in the dirt.

To their credit, MMP has been pretty rocking when there's been something to cheer about. Small, intimate ballparks tend to help create that atmosphere, though. When I refer to their bandwagon fans, I'm talking about the ones who thought they were absolutely finished, even after they had started to make their run at it in August.

How desperate for money WERE you? Not that desperate. They weren't all-girl teams. There were just the occassional teams that had a couple of girls on the them and as you'd imagine, they were essentially worthless.

I haven't seen swings that ugly since the summer I had to umpire little league teams that had girls on them.

Astros 8 - Andruw Jones 5.

As a Cubs fan, the Sox winning it all would be too bittersweet, so I'm busting out a curveball and getting behind the Cards. They've played great ball all season and deserve to take it all. Hopefully they'll capitalize and make short work of everyone they face this postseason.

I will, but I'll keep rooting hardcore for the Cards. I think the Stros are the only team in all of baseball I truly despise. All these bandwagon fans of theirs both me, too. This downsouth, hick atmosphere is going to be tough to stomach for too much longer.

Good to see Chipper getting it done at both sides. It's time for everyone to become Cardinals fans. If I can do it, so can you.

They'd better get going. After the last game, I won't count them down until it's over, but at this point, there's a very real chance this series will be finished tomorrow.

Dynamite. Bob, your team looks pathetic right now. I love ignorant Braves fans ragged on the Cubs for choking, but here the team is a week later doing it on a much grander scale.

Two-out walks will kill you. They don't win this one and I can't see them winning the series. Of course, moving on will be for nothing if Drew and Chipper don't break out of their slumps.

I don't. I just hate that he plays for Houston.

DVDTalk.com is quite good for new releases. Amazon is, too, and they add in price drops in there. The Digitalbits.com is a good site to check out cover art for upcoming releases.

It's tough when you haven't seen the pitcher much or at all. I agree with Justice, though. No way did Thomas take that one on purpose. No one takes a pitch off the knee and with the pitcher on deck and two outs, no less.

It can only go five, champ.

I'll add that I think it's funny how some people (not necessarily around here) are calling for Scoscia's job over this. This is one of the smartest managers in the game and just because one of his moves didn't go the way he wanted it do doesn't mean he should be out of a job. Some are comparing it to the Grady Little thing. Please. In both cases, the pitchers were tiring and clearly at the end of their rope. Thus, bringing in a new pitcher wasn't as insane as others have made it out to be.

Are you a major league pitcher, AS? If so, I'll concede defeat, but if you aren't, then pipe down. Is Washburn as good a pitcher as K-Rod? No, but he's certainly no slouch, regardless of what Game 1 may have illustrated. If you're not going to go by stats, then what about the fact that K-Rod had thrown 38 pitches in his 2.2 innings of work. This is for a guy who's used to working one inning or maybe 1.1 innings, tops. Had he left K-Rod in there and given up the game-winning shot to Ortiz, we'd have a clone of fallout to Wednesday night in New York, where Gardenhire took heat for leaving Nathan, a guy accustomed to working one inning, in there for three innings. On top of that, K-Rod was clearly tiring, which only made it look more like a carbon copy of the Nathan situation. But I guess he should've left him there, just because he was their best pitcher, right? We'll just ignore the fact that he had already gone much further than he ever did during the rest of the season and that he was just about out of gas when he did get the hook.

Al, showing AS stats is useless. He doesn't get that in baseball, nothing's for sure and that even when the numbers suggest one thing, the opposite may happen. Ortiz typically doesn't hit lefties at all. Thus, it was a good idea to go to a lefty. It didn't pan out, but had he brought in the lefty and he'd gotten Ortiz out, people would've praised the great managerial move.

VLAD! That was awesome. I thought for sure Eckstein would go down on three like Figgins did. And I missed it. Ran to get a shirt after the walk and came back to see the bases cleared and the game tied. Quite the turn of events.

I guess I'm going to have to continue to defend Weaver. Did he pitch well? No. Did he have a chance when his team only gave him three runs to work with? Hell no. Had Finley come through in that bases-loaded situation, Weaver's quasi-meltdown in his final inning wouldn't have been huge.

This is really pathetic. I figured the Sox were going to take the series, but the Angels look completely helpless out there. That fifth inning for the Halos was borderline embarrassing. Taking pitches right down the middle and awful-looking swings. Appears that they're not even going to make this one interesting.

Weaver wasn't good, but do you really expect to beat the CARDINALS with three lousy runs? Chances are, if you give up eight runs in each of the first two games, you aren't winning. But when you can't score more than three runs, you don't stand a chance.

Beating at least Clemens or Oswalt was key for the Braves to even think about going to the next round, IMO. Now they've got the momentum they need to go into Houston and take care of business. Even dropping one still ensures the series goes back to Atlanta. Had they lost today's game, it would've been tough to even muster a win in Houston, since it would left the Braves flatter than they already were until the 7th inning.

Cards are living on the edge so far tonight. This is how I expected their pitching staff to look all season. I can't believe they didn't get more than two in the inning, though.