To be successful in baseball, it pays to be more than a little
stubborn. It pays to have Ty Cobb’s chip on your shoulder, the
refusal to acknowledge your opponent or his ability to get
you out. It pays to have Greg Maddux’s surgical mind, a
long memory of your opponent’s weaknesses, and a
short memory of your own failures.
It pays to be the
cruel tormentors, the Yankees to the pre-2004 Red
Sox, to crawl inside your opponents’ head, let him
know you’re there, and never let him alone. As we
watch Barry Bonds take any means necessary to
pursue the all-time home run crown, the word
“ruthless” comes (ironically) to mind.
This stubbornness is how very good players become
great, and stay great. This inability to hear
death’s bony knock at the door is what drives teams like
the 2006 Cardinals to glory.
And if you think this sounds ungentlemanly, just think who
you’d rather be, Albert Pujols or Brad Lidge? Both men were once
at the very top of their game, but when they met after 12 games of
playoff baseball across 2004-05, Pujols sniffed out a weakness
and he drove his mighty hammer right into it. Lidge the budding
baseball god, whose fastball was thunder and whose slider was
lightning, fell to earth with a sickening thud.
Last Sunday, with both teams scuffling with 1-4 records, with
the Cardinals up late and Lidge getting in some garbage time,
with two swinging strikes past a flailing Albert, this bitter stubbornness
set in. His jaws clenched, Albert sent a hard smash to
the defensively-challenged Mark Loretta, finding a way on. Finding
a way to stay in Lidge’s head, to say “you still can’t get me
out.” Five runs came cascading down on Lidge’s suddenly fragile
frame after that moment, erasing any doubt about the game’s
outcome, and tumbling him prematurely from the precious
closer’s job.
So let’s not call it a “mystique,” but it’s worth mentioning at
this point that the Cardinals have won their season series with the Brewers in every year but one since the Brew crew joined the NL
Central, and that perhaps not coincidentally, that one year was
the interminably lousy 1999 season that found the Cards as close
to the basement of the division as they’ve been in a long time.
Perhaps you could say that we’re in their heads.
So if the Cardinals are to shake their early-season offensive
funk, and find a way to stay in the division, beating the upand-
coming Brewers would be an excellent place to
start.
1999, revisited
The 1999 Cardinals and Brewers both struggled
in every phase of the game it seemed, but a notvery-
good Brewers team that ended up finishing in
fifth place to the Redbirds’ fourth in the standings
wound up with an 8-7 advantage in the season
series. Our old friend Ronnie Belliard was on that
Brewers team, along with a hacktastic outfield of
Jeromy Burnitz, Marquis Grissom, and a young Geoff Jenkins. (Former Brewer Mike Matheny spent that ill-fated
year in Toronto before signing with the Cards in 2000.) I mention
this only to put a finer point on the crappiness of the team that
managed to outdo us in that year.
It was a down time for pitching for both ballclubs, as we
featured an eminently forgettable rotation: one good year of Kent
Bottenfield; the same Darren Oliver who very nearly quashed our
World Series hopes in last year’s NLCS; Jose Jimenez, who in
games in which he wasn’t throwing no-hitters, had an ERA that
Jason Marquis would be ashamed of; Kent Mercker (??!!??); and
Lady Byng candidate Garrett Stephenson.
Meanwhile, the 1999 Brewers countered with an odd lot of
Scott Karl, Steve Woodard, Hideo Nomo (??!!??), Bill Pulsipher
and one-handed Jim Abbott. Again, it’s worth asking, were either
of these teams even trying to win?
In addition to some royally crappy baseball and 65 more
Androballs, 1999 brought us Y2K bug fears, the death of grunge
(and the birth of something even worse, called “nu metal”), and
millions of dollars in song royalties to Prince.
Nineteen-ninety-nine also saw two
moves that would set the foundation
for the team we know and love today:
First, Walt Jocketty drafted Jose
Alberto Pujols with the 402nd pick of
the amateur draft. (That year’s No. 1
overall pick, Josh Hamilton, took his
signing bonus and promptly snorted up
half of Tampa Bay’s cocaine import, but
is currently clean and sober and trying
to stick with the Reds as a Rule 5 pick.)
Second, Jocketty pulled off one of the
single greatest heists in Cardinals
history, trading Adam Kennedy and
Kent Bottenfield to the Anaheim Angels
for the disgruntled Jimmy Ballgame.
We didn’t know it then, but in saying
goodbye to Kennedy, we were welcoming
in a whole new era of winning.
(Kennedy, of course, gathered a ring of
his own with the Angels in 2002.) Now
that player and team are reunited, the
second baseman is the only member of
the Cardinals who must be inoculated
in the ways of beating the Brewers.
No longer patsies
First off, it’s worth mentioning that
most of the years in which the Cardinals
dominated their Pabst-loving
cousins, Bud Selig was playing ownerin-
absentia, letting his senile children
run the team into the ground. Milwaukee
finally has a full-time owner, Mark
Attanasio, who is actually committed to
the team and the sport, and a general
manager, Doug Melvin, who has been
stockpiling a ton of attractive young
talent since coming on in late 2002.
Milwaukee was once unmentionable
as a baseball team. They were AAA, at
best. You could easily question, during
those dark Selig years – indeed, during
any of the years following their magical
but ill-fated run to the 1982 World
Series – whether they were even trying
to win.
Now, at least, they are trying. Our
old friend Jeff Suppan’s new four-year
contract has more guaranteed money in
it than was paid to the entire 2004
Brewers team, the last of the Selig-
Prieb embarrassments. A pattern of
shameful conduct in which nearly every
Milwaukee All-Star would be sold on
the following year’s trade market like a
hog at auction has been mercifully
halted – now talented fan favorites
such as Ben Sheets and Geoff Jenkins
are given long-term extensions, and emerging young talent making the
major league minimum, such as slugging
Bill Hall and potent lefty Chris Capuano are given seven-figure
salaries. Fans have actual baseball reasons
to invest in seats, beyond the daily
sausage races (now featuring Chorizo!)
and reportedly beautiful new ballpark
that their tax money paid for.
Couple this new penchant for playing
with major league dollars with the
emergence of young talent garnered
from years of high draft picks, and you
have a team that, quite suddenly, has
expectations. Questions will be asked of
manager Ned Yost that were unthinkable
when he was hired back in 2003.
Of all the managers on the hot seat this
year, he may be the least well known.
Yost was hired to be a father figure, a
disciplinarian, a teacher. He has taught
his players how to act on the baseball
field, how to shave, and how to open their first checking account, all the
while writing their names into the
lineup card. Cardinals manager Tony
La Russa stews in the dugout with his
sunglasses reflecting the evening lights
like a high-stakes poker player, calculating
the odds and thinking three
moves ahead. Yost just hopes his men
are wearing clean underwear.
And what of this talent?
Prince Fielder (1B), Rickie Weeks
(2B) and JJ Hardy (SS) are all in their
early 20s and form a possible All-Star
infield troika. Twenty-seven-year-old
Bill Hall had a breakout 2006, hitting
35 homers as a part-time shortstop,
and is now roaming the center field
grass. Jenkins, at age 32 one of the
most grizzled of veterans, is mentoring
two youngsters that are fighting each
other for time off the pine in Corey Hart and Gabe Gross. Either may take
his job some day soon.
Suppan is lending his accumulated
wisdom to three pitchers in their late
20s, all primed for a breakout, in Chris
Capuano, Ben Sheets, and Dave Bush.
And their bullpen is headed by Francisco
Cordero, formerly disgruntled as
a Ranger but lights-out so far in his
Milwaukee tenure.
But talent alone doesn’t win ballgames.
It certainly doesn’t halt long
losing streaks, such as the eight-game
skid in May and 10-game stain in September
that sunk the Brewers well below
.500 last season, and even in the
sorry NL Central, out of contention.
As both the Cardinals and Brewers
sit tenuously at 5-4 and atop the
division, our grit and gristle will be put
to the test against their youthful
exuberance, a creaking floodwall
stubbornly trying to contain the rapidly
rising waters until this storm passes.