A day off is good for this team’s bullpen, still not far enough removed for Tony’s liking from the 20-inning marathon last weekend.
Rest assured PH8 loyal readers (all three of you), we do not have any intention of hosting a live blog this weekend. As such, expect regular-old boring nine-inning games. Sorry.
Peoria Cardinals “fan” disappointed in 20th inning faithful
John Plevka of the Peoria Journal-Star let loose with a tidy little rant piece about ticket-holders leaving the ballpark during the Cards’ free baseball game with the Mets last weekend. To wit:
Look, I’m a diehard Redbird fan and I was disappointed by the eventual 2-1 loss, but why were so few fans remaining in Busch Stadium? Over the span of the final few innings the beautiful ball yard was a virtual graveyard? By my guess, less than 15,000 fans were still in the stands at game’s end.
So, in other words, after 20 innings and almost seven hours of baseball, the Cardinals had almost as many patrons as the Indians and Blue Jays can draw PER GAME?
My goodness, what could these fans possibly be doing otherwise? Perhaps one of the largest geographical fan bases in MLB were driving home? I wonder if Plevka would’ve held to this…
Call me cheap (and most people do), but even when the score’s 12-1, I stick around for the final pitch.
…if he’d actually held tickets.
Close as I can figure, it’s dang near three hours from Peoria to Busch III. That means for a 3pm game start, Mr. Plevka would’ve had to leave his home around 11:30am at the latest in order to catch first pitch. At 6:53 game duration, and assuming the game started promptly upon 3pm (which I’m certain it didn’t), that puts earliest “acceptable” stadium departure at 9:53pm. Depart the parking lots (tenable at best) and return to Peoria puts Mr. Plevka at home at approximately 1:30am. That’s a solid 14 hours (minimum) to “stick around for the final pitch”. Bully for you, John. Some folks can’t do that – namely those who have children (who Plevka admittedly mentions), those who traveled from farther than Peoria, not to mention those who had made plans for at MOST a four-hour game – long by MLB standards, but wanted to build in some cushion – before making other plans they couldn’t back out of.
My favorite part? Of course, it’s the ending:
The worst part? Cub fans noticed.
Care to show me another location where Cub fans thought the Cardinal fan base embarrassed themselves, Mr. Plevka?
Cardinals at FanGraphs
A couple of Cards made appearances at the popular stat-blog FanGraphs in the last couple of days.
A post today agreed favorably with the Cards’ decision to put Mitchell Boggs into the bullpen.
Yesterday, the topic was catcher defense and the addition of stolen base runs saved to the WAR numbers at the FanGraphs site. This obviously applies directly to Yadier Molina, and he is mentioned directly in the post.
This should be nothing new to our old-timers here at PH8 – we covered Cardinals versus the running game extensively last off-season.
The Sign Guy is on Twitter!
The e-mail came in to PH8 headquarters this morning:
Marty Prather (STLCardsSignGuy) is now following your tweets on Twitter.
Hot dog! Like him or not, everyone knows the Sign Guy. He’s visible at Busch III – and also on that new serious number commercial.
Now he’s keeping tabs on PH8. Perhaps a Honkin’ For Jaime sign is in order?
Next game: Cardinals (Garcia) at Giants (Lincecum), 04/23/2010 9:15pm
{ 3 comments }
It’s not the sign guy. it’s @athooks trying to play a big joke on everyone.
Is it, or is the joke on you? Think about that for a second…
I’m not even sure what that means. I must’ve been all hopped up on runs and Wainwright curveballs last night.
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