THE JAKES AND THE FAT MAN
Retardinals (36-26) at Astros (31-30)
Minute Maid Park
501 Crawford St.
Houston, TX 77002
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After a 17-11 record in the month of May, to the Astros June looks like it is shaping up to be a bigger sinkhole than the one swallowing up Daisetta, as the team has floundered so far to a 1-3 record this month. Maybe some home games, a rarity this season, will help.
The fucking Cardinals roll in sporting a 10-games-above-.500 record, despite having a pretty unimpressive lineup, a patched together rotation, and – after closer Jason Isringhausen essentially collapsed in upon himself last month – a bullpen in disarray. They still scare me though – I fucking despise them.
They can come in here this weekend and do whatever, just don’t bring that dancing faggot along with them. When I saw that guy, my first thought was, Jim Edmonds! But, oh yeah, Anaheim Jimmy now sashays around in centerfield in Chicago, not St. Louis.
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- Game 1: Friday June 6, 2008 – 7:05 p.m. CDT (FSN)
- Game 2: Saturday June 7, 2008 – 6:05 p.m. CDT (FSN)
- Game 3: Sunday June 8, 2008 – 1:05 p.m. CDT (my li’l tv station)
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I have tried in the past to be equanimical about Albert Pujols, the person. OK, no I haven’t. But anyway, he is a great ballplayer, no doubt; otherwise. . . meh. And in The Big Picture, what is it really worth to be a great ballplayer if, as a human being, one is basically a rich, useless, self-absorbed cipher?
I realize my bias as an Astros fan and an avowed hater of all things Jakes colors my impression of Pujols. I mean, 3rdinal fans say he is a great guy, religious, family man, etc. But that is the BFiBs. LaRussa seems to have suppressed sexual desires for him, but that is Mr. .093. To me, Pujols comes across – on the field – as a real prick. His stupid glare, his taking pissy exception to any pitch that isn’t laid out for him thigh-high and down the middle, his schoolyard bat flip on HRs, his bullshit slides into stationary players – all of it belies a man who’s only interested in and fascinated by himself. I’m with Brandon Backe on this one. Fuck him.
And fuck his super-pious fucking fundamentalist religious bullshit, too. I have nothing against Christians generally, even the holy rollers. But there is a special place in St. Louis, er, hell for cynical a-holes like Pujols, the sanctimonious fucks who profess their faith when it looks good in print but do not otherewise appear to be all that fucking “inspirational”, shall we say. But don’t even worry about me being pissed off about it and hating your guts, Pujols; I’m just an internet nobody with this little platform to fire shots across your bow from. Forget me – you are fucking with Mr. Supernatural now, baby. Even having LaRussa down on your résumé as your personal do-boy cocksucker won’t get you past that one.
God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God sid, “No.” Abe said, “What?”
God said, “You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you’d better run”
I remember seeing some AT&T commercials during the games last year. Apparently there were podcasts on the AT&T website featuring “Neon” Deion Sanders, former The ATL and Dallas Cowboy asshat turned very low wattage TV “personality” who visited various current athletes’ homes and spent some time hanging out with them. One of the athletes he hung out with was Albert Pujols.
Are there any physicists in the room? Has it ever happened that one black hole sucked into its maw another black hole? What happens then? The vapid, pointless, self-absorbed has-been Deion Sanders interviewing the hypocritical cheap shot surly asshole Albert Pujols must have been something like that. I cannot begin to imagine what inanities must have been involved. And I never went to AT&T’s website to find out. But I am betting there was a giant sucking sound, for one thing.
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Pitching Matchups
Friday
RHP Braden Looper (7-4, 5.03) vs. RHP Brian Moehler (2-2, 4.54)
Somehow Braden Looper is 7-4. He’s got an ERA over 5 and has given up 84 hits in 68 IP. He is averaging less than 6 IP per start. His run support (4.5 per game) has been okay, not tremendous. With the Astros, he’d be 2-7 or something. Lifetime vs. Houston he is 7-4, 3.12, much better than his overall numbers. . . Brian Moehler has given the Astros a warm body in the #5 starter spot, which he wrested from former rotation-dweller Chris Sampson not by being an appreciably better pitcher, but rather by being a more consistent one. Cecil Cooper decided he would opt for Moehler’s standard 4+ innings of good to excellent pitching before falling apart over Sampson’s great start-crappy start-mediocre start-in-no-particular-order routine. I didn’t think Moehler would last three starts, but it appears he will be around for somewhat longer than that.
Saturday
RHP Adam Wainwright (5-3, 3.12) vs. RHP Shawn Chacón (2-1, 4.41)
From Teh Wikipedia: “Adam Wainwright is a practicing Christian. In the off-season, he resides on St. Simons Island, Georgia, with his wife Jenny and their daughter, Baylie Grace. . . If nothing else, Shawn Chacón should be well rested after his last start, against Milwaukee, which lasted all of one inning. . . About a month or so ago, a poster at another fansite did a parody song in honor of Shawn Chacón. Pretty darn funny, some real characters on that site. And who is this guy Rob Hulsey? Never heard of him before, but what a card! Rob Hulsey, you’re a madman! If you are reading this, I wanna party with you, cowboy. The two of us together, forget it!
Sunday
RHP Kyle Lohse (6-2, 3.87) vs. RHP Wandy Rodriguez (2-1, 2.38)
Kyle Lohse is a lanky right-hander who was signed by the Jakes on the cheap this past off-season after a couple of unremarkable years with the Dickities and pHillie pHuckers. He has been an asset to 3rds rotation so far. Lohse is primarily known for A.) being one of only three non-Hispanic Native Americans currently playing in MLB, and B.) being a self-centered under-achiever who probably got a shitty contract this off season because of it. Well, that and having Scott Boras for an agent. . . Although the starting pitching in general still scares me, Wandy Rodriguez has been pitching really well since coming back off the DL. His start earlier this week in Pittsburgh – six innings of shutout ball – was beautiful, no other way to put it.
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Obligatory Ray King fat jokes
Ray King is so fat that when Mother Theresa saw Ray King, she said. . . OK, I’m going to stop this now. Like some others here, I piled on with the fat guy jokes when it was disclosed last week that the Astros had signed former Co-ardinal reliever and portly portsider Ray King to a minor league contract and had assigned him to Round Rock. What my humorous contributions to the lexicon lacked in quality, I attempted to make up for with quantity.
I feel bad about that. Fat jokes are generally rather primitive, for one thing. And then Jim R. informed us that, according to his source, King – while certainly large – is not fat at all, but rather is “well-muscled.” Yes.
He is no doubt also:
- Big-boned;
- Large-framed;
- His mom’s people have always been on the big side;
- He is not overweight for his height, he is short for his weight
So, no more fat jokes from me; and no more making fun of Ray King, either.
It’d be cool if Ray King was with the big club this series, and got to face his old team. You never know. If he does get called up from Round Rock, we should be able to start to see him as he nears Brenham or thereabouts.
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Injuries
St. Louis – Jason Isringhausen (RHP), locked save-blowing mechanism, psychological imbalance, 15-day DL; Joel Piniero (RHP), groin injury, 15-day DL; Chuck Berry (lead guitarist) rockin’ pneumonia, boogie-woogie flu, 15-day DL; Linda Blair (channeler of Satan), sore neck, damned for all eternity; William S. Burroughs (writer, junky), steely dan, hard to say; T.S. Eliiot (hollow man), whimper, 15-day DL; Richard Gephardt (politician), over-earnestness, intractable dullness, missing eyebrows, moved from 15-day DL to 60-day DL; Vincent Price (actor), the funk of 40,000 years, out 40,000 years; Ike Turner (olefactory specialist), enlarged uni-nostril, out indefinitely.
Houston – Greg Lucas (relief announcer) obscurantism, 60-day DL.
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Jakes win the series, 2-1.
Strange days have found us
Strange days have tracked us down
Theyre going to ruin
The goal we’re pursuin’
We shall go on playing
But we’re going down
Yeah!
Strange names fill strange lineups
The best laid plans have gone awry
LaRussa is grinning
The Cubs are even winning
Hear me talk of sin
And you know this is it
Yeah!
Strange days have found us
And through their strange hours
We linger alone
Bodies confused
Memories misused
As we run from the day
To a strange night of stone
Peace, my friend. Drinking really is the best way to kill the pain. My thoughts are with you.
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