Month: October 2010

“After an intense final week, there was a distinct lack of drama on the last day of the regular season in the Tout Wars mixed league. The season-long leader, Andy Behrens of Yahoo.com, managed to hold on for the title — winning by 3.5 points over Fanball.com’s Charlie Wiegert as my team faded to third place, 4.5 points back.”

Read the rest at Usatoday.com.

On the last day, Steve Gardner’s on the ropes, he writes at USATODAY.com.

With two left to play, is Alex Cushing. He explains why at USA Today.

Charlie Wiegert writes:

As I sat and listened to Cardinals President Bill Dewitt Jr and GM John Mozliak try to put a positive spin on the Cardinals season and make their pitch for next year to a select group of season ticket holders, I was more worried about how John Lester and Francisco Liriano were going to do last night.  I became a fantasy scoreboard watcher, sitting with one eye on Chris Carpenter and the other on the visitor scoreboard.

The White Sox score first on Lester and I blurt out “Oh Shit”, and have a bunch of people around me wonder what’s going on, since nothing happened on the Cardinals field. Come on Lester, get your act together here tonight I sputter, you do want win 20, right?  The Cardinals score as Albert rips a double into the left field corner and Spillborghs hacks the rebound off the wall and Schumaker easily trots home.  I look up at the scoreboard and see Victor hit a two run homer and the Red Sox have the lead…alright, things are going good.

For the Cardinals, things would get better, with two more runs in the second and third innings, and Carpenter is cruising.  Most of the throng of an announced 36,000 attendance that wasn’t a person more than 25,000 in the ball park is wondering why the Cardinals haven’t played more like this the last few weeks.  This game could have meant something, we’d be fighting for a playoff spot.

But as I look at the scoreboard, the only games that meant something to me are going wrong.   The White tie it up, and Toronto takes a two run lead on Liriano.  It would only get worse! The White Sox hit Lester with a 4 spot in the 4^th and tack 2 more on in the 5^th, and the Blue Jays hit the Twins with 2 in the fifth.  The only fifth I’m really thinking about at this spot is the one of Glen Livet I wish I had so I could drown away my sorrow, as I just watched my Tout wars team lose almost all hope.

As the Cardinals and Carpenter finish up the masterpiece over the Rockies, I hope Tulo’s one hit is the worst night from my hitters.  It wasn’t!  They went 8 for 31, a .258 average. As Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion show the fans at Target Field this can be a home run ball park after all, Lester, Liriano and Heath Bell combine for a 12.23 ERA and 2.23 Whip.   Somewhere there is a fat lady getting ready to sing (or maybe she already has but I don’t want to hear it!).

I’ve now fallen 3.5 points back.  I need Slowey, Lannan and Daniel Hudson to all throw shut outs and lot of other people to get lit up this weekend…so the Godfather is calling in some favors from the players that can make that happen!  Don’t hold your breath…I don’t have any horse heads I can put in peoples beds to get their attention!