It was the last day of summer, so after breakfast at Charcoal Delights -- where Katie was determined to steal Mommy's eggs -- we dropped Katie and Julie off at a friend's house and went down to Wrigley Field for the last game of the regular season. Unfortunately, the Cardinals lost which, in combination with the Phillies victory tonight, eliminated them from the playoff picture. Mind you, the odds were pretty long by this point anyway, but now I can root for the Cubs for the rest of the season with a clear conscience. :)

After we picked up Katie (who had skipped her nap) and Julie (who hadn't), we ran up to RAM for dinner. Katie was being moderately badly behaved, running away around the edges of the parking lot. This has been getting worse lately and is behavior we need to discourage right now. By the time we got home, Katie had worked herself up into persona non grata mode.

But first, she needed a bath, if for no other reason than to get the caramel from the apple dippers out of her hair. She was actually pretty well-behaved in the bath -- I suspect she realized that the limits of parental patience had arrived. We even managed to use the special bucket to rinse shampoo out of her hair without getting water in her eyes.

And then it was time to bathe baby sister. And the entertainment began.
( Pictures taken by husband with no survival instinct inside... )

We left Katie and Julie in the care of the girl next door as daisy_knotwise and I headed off to meet samwinolj and then to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play the Cardinals. I wore the red pocket-tee and Cardinals jersey that Gretchen had bought me for my birthday and apparently it brought the Cards some luck, as they beat the Cubs 12-3.

The conversation was good too. :)

I'm off to Milwaukee this evening to watch the Cubs play the Brewers. And from my point of view as a Cardinals fan first and a Cubs fan second, I'm happy to root for the Brewers to lose this game.

Since CC Sabathia, the Brewers' starter, is on my fantasy team though, I'm reduced to hoping that the damage to him is minimized.

It's a sad thing. :)

Ok, the Brewers had to give up a real prospect to get CC Sabathia. The Cubs, however, pretty much gave a mess of pottage for Rich Harden. And although Harden could break down again at any moment, right now Tony La Russa's looking at Carpenter, Wainwright, Clement, and Mulder who all appear unable to pitch, so a starter who might break down is looking pretty good to him, I suspect.

Thus, Tony threw Mulder out to start tonight against the Phillies saying, "Who better? If you've got a better choice, let me know."

Mulder lasted 16 pitches and three batters (one strikeout, two walks) before leaving with shoulder pain in a game the Cards lost 4-2.

I think Tony's saying in a none too subtle way to his GM, get me a pitcher.

The trip to Lisle went well yesterday and I'm hoping to post pictures tomorrow. Today, things were pretty relaxed as we recovered.

I got to watch the end of the Cubs / Cardinals game where the Cards dropped three runs on Kerry Wood in the ninth inning, aided -- no doubt! -- by the Fox announcers who awarded the Player of the Game to Aramis Ramirez with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Ramirez having hit the homer that gave the Cubs the lead shortly before. Moments later, Rick Ankiel singled up the middle driving in the tying and winning runs to go with his homer earlier in the day, so I'm thinking that maybe Ankiel ended up deserving that particular honor. I'm also thinking that he preferred the victory. :)

After dinner, we called up Bob and Anne Passovoy and took advantage of the lovely evening to drive down there and present them with their Filk Hall of Fame plaque and citation. We'd meant to do this the previous weekend, but had completely spaced that they'd be at Anthrocon working on the security contract there. They were delighted to get it and we then spent a pleasant time chatting before heading home.

Low impact days can be a very good thing.

It's important to raise your kids right. And with a little help from catalana, we're working on that. There are, of course, photos.
( In here! )

I was surprised that the Cubs actually made it into the postseason.

I was somewhat more surprised that the Cardinals fired general manager Walt Jocketty today.

Gack!

catalana, sexybass, and sueposter joined me at today's Cubs / Cards game at Wrigley Field. Sadly, we had two rain delays and the Cards lost as well, aided by a blown call at home.

*sigh*

Of course, the Cubs are still in first.

If the Cardinals can find some starting pitching, they could be really dangerous. They just finished a three-game sweep of the Brewers in Milwaukee to move within 2.5 games of first, two games of .500, and are only one game back in the loss column.

The Cubs, meanwhile, finally beat the Reds to move 0.5 game behind the Brewers.

The Cubs and the Cards play each other this weekend at Wrigley. I'll be there on Saturday.

And I suspect a lot of people will be there wearing red. :)

And the report is in from the police on the death of Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock. He was drunk, with a blood alcohol content of about twice the legal limit. He had marijuana and a pipe in the car, although they haven't yet done the blood work to determine whether he'd been using that as well. He was talking on his cell phone. And he wasn't wearing his seat belt.

In one of my favorite quotes from M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter goes off on the staff for "putting be stupid at the top of your list of things to do today". Apparently, it was at the top of Hancock's list that night.

Damn.

After the way the Cardinals stumbled into the playoffs, I thought they'd be lucky to get out of the first round. I never thought I'd see them winning the World Series. And confounding all the experts, the World Series did end in the five games many of them had predicted, but with the Cardinals coming out on top instead of the Tigers.

The Tigers had a fine team, so I'm fairly sure we'll be seeing more of them in the future. And the Cardinals are now the team with the fewest regular season wins (in seasons not shortened by a strike) to win the World Series.

More than that, Cards shortstop David Eckstein is now the shortest winner of the World Series MVP award. (And from everything I've read and heard, a heckuva nice guy. Apparently, the Corvette he just won is the first new car he's ever owned.)

Whodathunkit?

daisy_knotwise gave me a pass to watch game four of the World Series. (She also gave a pass to Helen, who's from Detroit and is a Tigers fan, because she believes in being evenhanded.) So I skipped tonight's Capricon meeting and watched a really exciting game of baseball.

The Cardinals finally took a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the seventh, coughed it up in the top of the eighth to give a 4-4 tie, then scored once in the bottom of the eighth on a David Eckstein double off the left fielder's outstretched glove. Wainwright (who gave up the tying double in the top of the eighth) set down the Tigers in order in the top of the ninth to preserve his vultured win.

The Cardinals now lead the World Series three games to one, as the improbable series of events continues. Of course, the TV graphic notes that the last time the Cards led a World Series by this margin was in 1985 vs. the Kansas City Royals and I still remember what happened then.

On the other hand, Don Denkinger is safely in retirement.

I'll continue to cross my fingers.

It's hard to say that game three of the World Series was a must win game for the Cardinals, given that the series was tied at one game a piece going in. But when you're at home and the ace of your staff is starting, well, yes, you really need to win that game.

The good news was that Carpenter pitched a great game. The better news was that the Cards scored five runs, which turned out to be four more than Carpenter actually needed. Mind you, three of the runs came on a wild throw and a wild pitch from the Tigers pitchers, but you've got to accept gifts graciously when they're given to you.

So the Cards go up two games to one and game four is tomorrow. Since daisy_knotwise will be out shopping for decorations for the baby shower with marniegucciard and Bonnie, there's no chance of recording, so I guess I'm free to watch the game.

Tommy Lasorda notwithstanding, I tend not to pay a tremendous amount of attention to the World Series when there's no team in it that I'm interested in. (Talk to daisy_knotwise and you may find out that the amount of attention I pay is still "pretty fair"...) But the Cardinals are, much to my surprise, in the Series and have managed to win at least one more game than some folks expected so that they've headed back to St. Louis with it all tied up at a game a piece.

Now I have a stupid number of vocal parts to record down in the studio. But my voice (although improving) isn't quite ready to handle that yet. So I have the perfect excuse for watching the game.

I just have to avoid shouting at the television.

Well, I wouldn't have guessed what would happen today.

I did guess that the starting pitchers would do well, given the large strike zone that the home plate umpire allowed. And Suppan and Perez both pitched well, giving up a run each.

I didn't expect that Rolen, who had been having trouble driving the ball due to a sore shoulder, would hit a ball over the left-field fence. Nor did I expect that Endy Chavez would haul it back into play and double Edmonds off first. Ick.

When Rolen threw a ball away in the bottom of the same inning for a two-base error to set up runners on second and third with one out, I feared the worst. And when Chavez subsequently came up with two outs and the bases loaded and the score tied, I fervently hoped that he wouldn't get a hit, because we would have been hearing about him forever. Fortunately, he didn't.

The second-guessers complained about Randolph leaving Heilmann in to pitch the top of the ninth, but it made perfect sense. He was facing the Cards sixth, seventh, and eighth place hitters. all righties, and was due to bat third himself in the bottom of the ninth. So you want to save Wagner to face the top of the order in the tenth and maybe even pitch the eleventh. And if Heilmann got in trouble, you could still bring in Wagner. The strategy was good.

Of course, home runs beat the living bejeezus out of strategy. And when Rolen singled to start the ninth and Molina followed with a homer that was far out of Chavez's reach, well, it was a little late to bring in Wagner.

So with a two-run lead, Wainwright made it exciting by giving up singles to the first two hitters he faced. But he then struck out Floyd, pinch-hitting for Heilmann, got Reyes to line to Edmonds in center, and walked LoDuca to load the bases. This brought up Beltran who single-handedly killed the Cards in the 2004 NLCS.

And Wainwright struck him out on three pitches, leaving him looking at a curveball to end the game.

So much to my surprise, I find the Cardinals playing the Tigers in the World Series.

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I thought I might get out of work today in time to grab a quick haircut, but the software wasn't cooperating, so I'll be a bit shaggy this weekend at OVFF, which isn't a problem. When my boss arrives for a visit next week, well, that might be a problem, but probably not a big one.

In the meantime, I'm burning CDs of rough mixes for catalana's and my albums while watching game seven between the Cards and Mets. The umpire is the game one umpire who had the enormous strike zone. He's still got it.

There is a theme to my posts today. We'll see how things end up.

The Cardinals will need to use tomorrow, as they dropped game six of the NLCS to the Mets tonight 4-2 in a game that wasn't as close as the score indicates. A bit more hitting on the Cards part would be helpful.

Yesterday's scheduled game five between the Cards and the Mets was rained out, which meant that Weaver and Glavine would be able to start today on normal rest. In game one, Glavine pitched the Mets to a 2-0 shutout victory. The Mets scored the same two runs tonight, but the Cards touched Glavine for three runs and the Mets bullpen for another run, which gave the Cards a 4-2 win and a 3-2 series lead.

Game six is in New York tomorrow and the Cards have Carpenter starting. Keep your fingers crossed that there won't be a game seven.

I headed off for the last WindyCon meeting today, after which daisy_knotwise picked me up and we headed off to Sam and Bonnie's to move some furniture before the guy shows up to sand their floors. After dinner, we came back to watch a pretty disastrous game for the Cards, where the bullpen decided not to pitch and the fielders decided not to field, generally a bad combination.

I think that's enough of this.

Much to my surprise, the Cardinals are now leading the Mets in the NLCS two games to one after tonight's 5-0 win. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed.

But it was fun when daisy_knotwise and I were waiting for a table at Spaghetti Warehouse tonight and I was watching the game on a TV there with another displaced Cardinals fan. When Darrin Oliver came in with the bases loaded and the Cards already up 3-0, I said, "I'd settle for a walk." And after ball one, I followed up with, "Or even a pitch back to the screen." And ball two went to the screen, making the score 4-0. And there was much amusement.

Ok, with Chris Carpenter pitching for the Cards, you had to hope they were going to win tonight. And when I tuned in and discovered that the score was tied 4-4 after four innings, you had to wonder what had happened to Chris Carpenter. While I watched, the Mets scored two more runs to take a 6-4 lead. Ick.

Since my throat had been bothering me, I went out to the Dairy Queen with daisy_knotwise to have a malt. While were were in the store, the Cards scored two runs to tie it up. I took this as a hint that the Cards might actually do better if I weren't watching, so when we got home, we fired up an episode of JAG on the pseudo-Tivo.

After that, I flipped back to Fox and discovered that the Cards had just taken a 8-6 lead in the top of the ninth. I watched them score another run to make it 9-6 and decided I could chance watching the bottom of the ninth. There were no problems -- with the help of a good stop by Scott Rolen, who'd gone in as a defensive replacement. (If Phil Garner had thought to do that in the All-Star Game, the NL might have home field advantage in the World Series.)

So the Cards win a game that they really needed to win and head off to St. Louis with the series tied at 1-1. Given that I wasn't sure the Cards would get through the first round, that's not too bad.

We had a great time at ConClave.
( Which you can find out about here... )
All in all, a fun weekend. But, boy, am I tired!

daisy_knotwise and I got back from ConClave late this evening, just before the Cards recorded the final out to beat the Padres 6-2 and win their first-round playoff series three games to one. I was also happy over the weekend to see the Tigers eliminate the Yankees.

We had a great time at ConClave and I know I'll say more about it later, but I've spent the last hour or so putting together CD reorders for OVFF so folks have a chance to actually ship them in time to arrive for the con without having to go nuts. And now I could really use some sleep, because I was having far too much fun at ConClave and far too little sleep.

The Cards beat the Padres 2-0 this afternoon to go up two games to none in the best of five series. Now, they head back to St. Louis where they'll play on Saturday.

I'll keep my fingers crossed. It was interesting trying to listen to the game on the way home from work. The station that had been broadcasting ESPN Radio on Tuesday wasn't for some reason. I tried picking up the Cards affiliate in Peoria on 1470 AM and found that it was drifting in and out due to interference from some other station that had the ESPN broadcast. So sometimes I had Wayne Hagen and sometimes I had Mike Shannon and mostly I had a lot of noise.

But I did get to hear the final out.

We finished the edits to catalana's lead vocals today, experimented with various harmonies, replaced tarkrai's line on Saturday Nights as it was a bit more aggressive than would actually work with the song, and looked at some stuff for my album.

Having run out of useful things to do in the studio (especially when I have not a lot of voice due to a cold), we all went out to see The Devil Wears Prada at the cheap theater and to grab some dinner afterwards. Now, we're cleaning up a little Capricon business that daisy_knotwise needs to finish and then working on catalana's cover.

In other news, the Astros lost and the Cardinals clinched the NL Central title. Yay!