WS Game 3

Hey, how 'bout that Cardinals baserunning, eh? I heard/read about half a dozen times yesterday that St. Louis was really going to "put pressure on the Sox defense" with their running around the diamond. Instead, they ended up killing two rallies. Three cheers for small ball!

In fairness, one should remember that Suppan is a pitcher, and Walker testing Manny's arm in the first is a defensible gamble considering that Reggie Sanders, hitless so far in the World Series, was on deck. Still, nothing kills an inning like a baserunning error.

I'm surprised Bill Simmons hasn't come out with the official rating on the unintentional comedy (UIC) scale for pitchers running the basepaths. Possibly the funniest moment in Game 1 came in the 8th inning when Cards' pitcher Jason Marquis ran for Mike Matheny. Cedeno hit a single to right field, seemingly a prime opportunity for the runner on first to take third base. Instead, Marquis stumbled badly and finished the play clinging to second base like a drunk on a lightpole. Tim McCarver, trying to keep a straight face, intoned: "That's the risk you take when you pinch-run a pitcher." Yeah. You never know if they'll be able to successfully run 90 feet in a straight line.

Speaking of Simmons, he had the best line today from the Game 3 coverage in his brilliant analysis of Tony LaRussa, which he concludes with:

And [LaRussa]'s firmly entrenched in that Brett Favre Zone, where the announcers are so busy paying homage to him for three hours, they don't even notice when he screws up.

And more props to Simmons for this mea culpa:

Reason No. 435 why I wouldn't make a good manager: I would have benched Mark Bellhorn before Game 5. Now he's a possible candidate for World Series MVP.

Simmons, of course, is one of about a thousand "experts" who wanted to bench Bellhorn, but he's the only one man enough to admit it now.

However, I did object to Simmons' "Win it for Grady Little...he deserves a normal life again" quote towards the beginning of his column, seeing as how Simmons has done as much as anyone over the past year to crucify Grady (with what, let us remember, is still a second-guess, despite being officially canonized into the Hall of Conventional Wisdom today) and dredge up the memory of that decision over and over and over. Seems like a more magnanimous gesture would be to forgive these guys for past transgressions before your team is right on the brink of finally winning it all.