As the Reds prepare to host the Cardinals this weekend, I thought it might be necessary to help the host team out with a few friendly suggestions about how to stay hospitable and maintain the highest level of decorum they can muster.
- Don’t do “The Wave”. It’s pathetic in any stadium, and it just looks really bad when you can’t figure out which direction it should go. If you are going to do it, at least try to go horizontally this time.
- Don’t tap Yadi’s shinguards, chest protector, or even a bobblehead of Yadi. “Angry Yadi” is a far better hitter than just regular Yadi, and regular Yadi is currently hitting .294. Yadier Molina is a bad, bad man.
- Keep Johnny Cueto on a short leash. No, I mean on a real leash. He’s about as useful as an escalator with no power (think stairs with teeth).
- If you happen to see a “monster blast” home run, keep in mind that your team plays at the Great American Ball Park and NASA Launch Pad Test Facility. It’s like junior high softball field dimensions with the wrong numbers painted on the outfield wall. It’s kinda of like taking a 3-wood to a par 3 course or playing Wii baseball. Of course it’s a joke.
- When you announce that awesome paid attendance for each game in the series, remember to give thanks to the Cardinals fans who travel to your town. They probably comprise about 1/3 of the people who paid to be there. Actually, they are the ones who paid for the good seats. I’m watching. I know you drew 11,821 against Houston at home, and I’m not the least bit impressed. Step up your game. You played in front of an average paid attendance of over 40k in Stl. Step it up, Redlings.
- You might as well give away some tickets. I see that on StubHub tickets for one of the games against the Pirates go for as low as $1. Why bother? Just give them away and fill the seats. StubHub charges more in fees than you do for a lot of your tickets. Heck, it costs a fair amount just to print out a ticket at home. Oh, the pain!
- I heard about that incredibly clever menu item you created. “Smoked Cardinal” is pure genius, if by “genius” you really mean”classless”. Were you aware that St. Louis already had something named in honor of the Cincinnati Reds? Yes, they are called “urinal cakes”, and they can be found in restrooms located all around the stadium. They’ve been around for many, many years. Prior to that incarnation, the Cardinals honored the Reds with what we call “toilet paper”. It’s that stuff that Cardinals fans usually pack along with them to the GABP.
- You are perfectly welcome to keep Ryan Theriot for a few days after the weekend is over. Nobody in St. Louis really needs fashion tips from someone with a pathetically weak soul patch, anyway.
- I’m tired of hearing about Aroldis Chapman and his 106 mph fastball. I’ve seen him throw a couple times this season, and I’ve only seen him reach 98-99 a few times. Bring the real goods, or stop yapping about it.
- Your whole organization owes Jason LaRue a huge apology, a mansion, a yacht, a car, and maybe a nice dinner. You should probably invite him to throw out a ceremonial first pitch and cheer him like crazy, but that’s probably too much to ask. Seriously, you might want to try to make amends, since one of your punk players ended his career by being a little fathead. Never mind. LaRue has more class in his catching gear than you do on your whole team, but that’s mostly because you have Phillips and Cueto.
- Try to temper your enthusiasm about Adam Wainwright being injured. Less singing and dancing, and more humility. Cardinals players and fans don’t celebrate that mental issue that Phillips has, so why kick Adam when he’s down? He’ll be back at some point, and he’ll be fine. Phillips will always be the southern end of a northbound mule.
- By the way, keep clinging to that “2010 NL Central Division Championship” broom or whatever it is you have hanging up at GABP. Lot of good it did you. Way to represent. The NL Central could have sent the Astros and had the same results. Thanks for nothing. Don’t remind anybody of what you did last year. Nobody is really all that impressed. Whoops. I’m probably wrong. The approximately 14,000 Reds fans who regularly pay to attend your games are probably somewhat impressed, if they aren’t completely disinterested by the 4th inning. Remember, these are the same people who are fascinated by service staff in restaurants who can write their names upside-down on paper table covers using crayons.
- Save yourselves the trouble of the Joey Votto versus Albert Pujols comparisons as well. In his ages 23-26 seasons, Votto compiled a total WAR of 13.8. In Albert’s ages comparable seasons, he compiled a total WAR of 36.8. Votto has been getting it done since 2009, but Albert’s been the mang since 2001. Case closed.
- Recognize that you are playing near your talent max, and you are still a game behind a team that has already lost its ace pitcher for the season, has its superstar player off to a slow start, and is penciling in 3/4 of an infield consisting of “irregulars”.
- Just remember that if there is another division realignment in baseball, you probably belong in a division with Memphis. Memphis would need a slightly higher payroll, but the guys there deserve it. Don’t worry, though. You would have company there, because the Nationals should go along with you.
TIDBIT: Don’t think I didn’t notice that a Placido Polanco bobblehead doll would simply be a scaled down version of the real Placido Polanco. (No exaggeration required.)
Like it? Wonder why Votto was drafted in 2002 but didn’t make his MLB debut until 2007? Follow gr33nazn on Twitter, and we’ll discuss this important question along with Polanco’s giant noggin!
Cardinals fan since I could hold a fishing pole steady. Accidental blogger. Opinionated. I could care less about what you think of me. Constantly confounded, bemused, and confuzzled (ie I'm a pc and a mac). I'm an IT infrastructure analyst with a penchant for breaking tech toys. I ate a sabermetric primer for breakfast. I love playing "All-powerful GM of MLB". The 2010 Cardinals represented a good, practical definition "cognitive dissonance". The 2011 version got by on duct tape and a prayer, and I'm fine with that. They just need new tape for #12 in 12.
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Now I feel REALLY bad that I suck at Wii baseball.
No worries. I’m like 0-10 in the last 3 months against mini-gr33nazn. Last games was lost by the 5-run mercy rule, and I think I strained my spleen swinging at a splitter in the dirt.
Cueto Didnt Look Useless Last Night Did He ? Just Because You Like To Sniff Pujols Jock, Dont Hate On Votto, He Is One Hell Of A Player Who Is Earning His Contract More This Yr. Than Your Prince Albert.
Apparently the friendly advice should’ve included “learn punctuation and proper case”?
Walt
While you are correcting other people’s grammar perhaps you should know you don’t end a declarative sentence with a question mark
Thank you for the tip?
Oddly enough, Albert is in the final year of a lengthy contract, and he’s probably earned every penny of it based on his performance. Votto has several years to go on his contract extension, so a lot of things can still happen. It’s not a matter of hating on Votto, anyway. It’s simply a matter of laughing at people who so quickly put him into the “greatest 1B conversation” with Pujols after such a short period of time. He simply may never get there.
I’d go into more detail, but I doubt you would bother to try and consume all of the information.
Where’s all the butthurt Cards fans now? GO REDLEGS!
We’re all right where we’ve always been. We’re acting like we’ve watched our team succeed in previous years. We’re acting like adults. We’re acting like we realize that baseball is a game, and we’re passionate about that game without being brats. In short, we’re not acting the same way you are.
We’re not cheering when another team’s player gets hit by a pitch. We’re not cheering a potential injury. We’re displaying a bit of class. That’s a lot more than I can say for some people like you. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to interact with several Reds fans who aren’t like you. As with all fans of all teams, there are some really good ones and some really bad ones. I don’t paint them all with the same brush. However, I do feel pretty confident when I address you specifically. You deserve to be grouped with the likes of Cueto for lacking a sense of good sportsmanship and decency. Too bad. Maybe some day you will grow out of it and learn that the art of talking trash can be raised to a much higher level.
Frankly Dennis, you’re not acting like an adult whatsoever. You’re writing a journal for your friends to read online so you can find a forum to whine and complain like a teenager. You think you’re in a position to give Reds fans advice, and you think someone actually cares what your opinion is. Cardinals fans crack me up. They cling to the past like an senile old man while whining and complaining like a spoiled brat who thinks they’re entitled to everyone’s respect. You’re days at the top of the Central are over St. Louis, face it. But go head and keep on blogging there Dennis, and keep changing your argument in true Cardinal fashion. First it was “The Reds aren’t as good as the Cardinals, no way!” That argument disappeared quickly after we ran away with the Central. Then it was “the Reds were a flash in the pan!” That disappeared as we swept the Cards and sent them home with their tails between their legs. Now it’s “Your attendance sucks!” or “Your ballpark’s small!” or “Johnny Cueto’s a bully!” or (my personal favorite) “Your grammar is terrible!” I feel pretty pathetic that I’m even addressing a fans like you.
Now, I know that you’re probably sitting in your mom’s basement with your Cards shirt tucked into your hiked up pants and a foam finger on one hand, so you’ve probably never been in a fight before. But if on the off chance you have been, you understand the amount of adrenaline that flows through you and causes you to do things you may regret afterward. Do I need to remind you that Johnny Cueto was gang tackled, driven backwards, and thrown over the railing into the net by the Cards? What would you do in that situation? Well you would probably quiver violently and wet your pants, but what would an average person do? React. Defend. That’s what happened. It’s incredibly unfortunate what happened to LaRue because there is so much love for him in Cincinnati, but his career was pretty much over anyways. The bigger tragedy is that he had to end his career playing with the scum in the St. Louis dugout.
But keep up the brilliant blogging Dennis, you illustrate clearly why every other team in the Central hates St. Louis. Your sense of entitlement and blatant arrogance makes that SWEEP taste so much better. Even better is that you prove Brandon Phillips right everyday: the Cardinals organization and fan base is nothing more than a bunch of complainers.
Keep living in the past! We’ll worry about the future.
Oh Tyler. Most of the article was written as a tongue-in-cheek way of taking jabs at good-natured Reds fans who aren’t really in any way different than Cardinals fans. Part of the article was written to make note of some bandwagon Reds fans who haven’t been saying much during the past 20+ years. The rest was to legitimately point out that the Reds face the possibility that they might have to play better than they did last year in order to win the division. The key word there is “might”. I expect the Reds to start hitting better, and I don’t expect the Cardinals to maintain their current hitting pace. However, I do expect the Brewers to step it up soon. In no way would I actually care about really trying to give fans of another team real advice.
I do find it terribly ironic that you are attempting to cast my blogging in a negative light by replying with a comment that is easily the length of what some might consider a typical blog post. I’m not sure why a sweep by a baseball team would “taste so much better” to a fan of the team. Do you actually play for the Reds? Did you throw a pitch in the game? When the Reds win, do you proudly announce to everyone you know that “we won”?
Oddly enough, it seems that the biggest whiner on this entire page is actually you. The “mom’s basement” and “foam finger” bits are nice touches, though. For someone accusing me of failing to act like an adult, you seem to be excelling at that very same behavior yourself. It’s not like anybody is forcing you to comment on this site.
You can keep trying to rewrite history all you like with regard to Cueto. No matter how you describe the events leading up to Cueto kicking LaRue, you cannot excuse what he did. You cannot change the end result. As I’ve already stated, the argument that LaRue’s career was coming to an end soon has no weight. Tomorrow is promised to no man, so you have no way of knowing how many games LaRue lost. If the same thing happened to a player at age 23, you could not with absolute certain say that the player was losing out on any specific number of years. The player could suffer a career ending injury at age 30, or he could play until he is 44. You just never know. What we do know is that Cueto ended LaRue’s career prematurely, and there is no excuse for that at all.
Let’s be serious. LaRue was in his 16 season(11 of which were with the Reds). He was 36 years old. He had already played well past the average career span for a catcher. He’d been considering retiring for a few years. All he had was a concussion. If he’d wanted to come back this year, he would have. If he was good, he would have been back by the end of the year. However, as he was batting .196 for you guys and rosters were about to expand to the 40 man, there was really no use for him. Yadi is better offensively and defensively and he had no use as a pinch hitter. I think retirement was a graceful way of bowing out when his talents were no longer needed. I mean that honestly, because I love Rusty and I wish he’d never been traded.
If you don’t want your players to get injured, tell Chris Carpenter not to make a beeline for Cueto and drive him into a defenseless position where all he can do is kick. Carpenter is as much to blame as Cueto. The injury is incredibly unfortunate, but Cueto did nothing worse than any player who’s ever been in a fight. If you think Cueto is a monster, you should feel the same way about Nolan Ryan, Robin Ventura, Mike Piazza, Pedro Martinez, and every other player that’s ever fought. If you attack Cueto, how do you defend Carpenter going right after him (knowing full well that Cueto was starting that game and had pitched a great 1st)?
And trust me, your 100% right about the irony of me posting here. It’s embarrassing
Gets your facts straight. Better yet, check out the following link for a pdf that contains screenshots with a step-by-step account with arrows and an explanation of what happened. http://bit.ly/jIz6pl Cueto went looking for Carpenter.
Wow.
nice work putting in the time to try and manipulate some still shots into selling your point. i really like when cueto is “assaulting” carpenter from behind. i actually started laughing. under your definition of assault i think every person in the fight should be in prison. you could have saved some time and just watched the video. its right here http://youbeenblinded.com/cardinals-and-reds-clear-the-benches-after-brandon-phillips-comments/8591. you clearly see cueto being pinned against the fence by carpenter, who is being driven there by his own team.
Really? Look at where Cueto started. How exactly did he end up even near the screen or even near Carpenter? Wait, I got it. Maybe there is a two-Cueto scenario….lol. If you are only going to selectively see what you want to see, then don’t bother continuing to comment. It’s also obvious that I’m not the one who put together the collection of stll shots, “tyler”.
Perhaps the better question is where have all these Reds fans coming out of the woodwork been the last twenty years?
I know they certainly haven’t been at the ballpark in Cincy, so I’m genuinely curious…
I believe that PH8 was really asking a question. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to add a comma between “grammar” and “perhaps” in your flawed attempt to correct another person’s grammar. A period at the end of your poorly constructed “sentence” would be nice as well.
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