Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

One thing is for certain about horse racing: there is no such thing as a “sure thing.” Horses are living, breathing creatures with as distinct personalities as pedigrees. A horse is not a car — he gets sick, gets hungry, gets full of himself, gets tired. In short, he is a real athlete in every sense of the word. And just as in the human world, there are those horses who stand out among the rest physically and mentally, being born with a talent that screams to be exercised. There are horses, and then there are horses.

Back in December, I wrote a long-winded eulogy for Jim Edmonds when his ties were cut with the Cardinals upon being shipped to San Diego. I wanted to remember his loping, upper-cut swing, his shoestring or scaling-the-wall catches, his notoriously lackadaisical appearance on the field, his So. Cal. bleached tips, his uncanny ability to clobber the high fastball and that glorious, walk-off home run he hit off Dan Miceli to keep the Cardinals alive in the 2004 NLCS.

I never published that eulogy. And now, I’m glad I didn’t, because Jim Edmonds isn’t going quietly into the night. Instead, he’s playing for the arch-rival Cubs. Whether Edmonds, who once admitted to treading lightly on Wrigley’s warning track thanks to its vine-covered brick walls, has any gas left in the tank or not is beside the point. He’ll be wearing the C on his chest, and that’s uncomfortable for Redbirds fans. The man who said on many occasions that he wanted to end his career in St. Louis will now likely cap his career in Chicago. That’s tough to stomach.

What’s big, yellow, and wants you to share the road? If you’ve seen the C-U Mass Transit District’s new Share the Road bus, it’s no mystery. The bus, which travels on various routes throughout the area depending on the day, made its debut a few weeks ago.

Now that we’re nearly at the quarter pole of the regular season, the flukes of April should be fading away to reveal something more concrete in the American League Central. Instead, it’s a muddled race to the middle, with only 4.5 games separating first place from fifth, and no team with a winning percentage over .530 or under .400. Any analysis based on a given team’s spot in this crapshoot could be completely irrelevant by this time next week. But hey, that’s why I’m here.

Not to seem overly pessimistic, but with high expectations often comes excruciating pain. At the beginning of the year, my hopes for the Cardinals were somewhat optimistic with a certain amount of understandable trepidation. All of a sudden, we start looking pretty good and I assume we should win every damned game we play. It’s easy to complain, much harder to be realistic.

Biatches

Last Thursday morning my son repeated this lovely word back to me after he heard me refer to my shoes as "biatches." I had been explaining to my wife why I needed to replace them, and my son decided he liked the word and happily shouted it back. It’s probably not the first time my son has heard me spout an expletive; in fact, unfortunately, he probably heard me use similar language the day before to describe the Cubs' lackluster 9–0 loss to an unimpressive Cincinnati ballclub. Returning from vacation is never fun. During my time away from home the Cubs lost two of three in four straight series. After starting 15–6, they had fallen to 19–15, going 4–9 in their last 13 games.

Yes, its quite possible my son heard a few negative words during that stretch, but hearing the word ‘biatches’ from your 17-month old kid kind of gives me a little perspective…

All right, Mr. Big, you now have my full and undivided attention. Not only did you prove that you deserved the hype before the Kentucky Derby, you’ve succeeded in building an imposing mystique around your huge physique. You won the Derby coming from post 20, which no horse has done since a starting gate amounted to a piece of string; you won the race after staying on the outside of the herd and blowing away to a four and three-quarter length victory; and you’re the first Derby winner to scare off practically all of the other Derby contenders to enter the Preakness since Citation in 1948. Citation, in case you weren’t aware, was America’s eighth Triple Crown winner. One of eleven.

The Cardinals’ Rick Ankiel has accomplished more in his six-year major league career than most. He’s won 13 games and sports a 3.90 career ERA. He’s averaged better than a strikeout per inning on the mound. At the plate, he owns a .470 slugging percentage and 67 career RBIs.

Ankiel has also earned enough criticism, empathy, praise and “What if … ?”s in six seasons to last him a lifetime. The role of pitching phenom is never an easy part to play. Just ask Kerry Wood or Mark Prior. But neither of their stories mimic the bizarre tale of Ankiel, which any recent baseball fan knows all too well. His progression has been a memorable one: “the next Sandy Koufax,” Game 1 of the 2000 NLDS, wild pitches, mental blocks, media scrutiny, failed comeback, Single-A ball, injuries, more failure, thoughts of quitting, rebirth as a position player, success in the minors, comparisons to The Natural in the majors, scandal, suspense.

Since I completely jinxed last week’s feature subject, Brian Bannister (3 IP, 7 ER, 3 HR allowed in his start last Wednesday, ERA jumped from 2.48 to 4.04), this week we’ll test the extent of my jinxing powers with Cliff Lee, who will be starting tonight for the Cleveland Indians versus the New York Yankees. The game’s on ESPN at 6 p.m., so if you have cable and some free time, check it out.

Hello everyone, 2ON2OUT is back from vacation, and don’t think I was slacking. No, I was busy taking in a game at historic Grayson Stadium. This week to get back in the swing of things and to mirror my feelings about the Cubs current 3–8 stretch, we’ll play Minus/Plus short and quick, straight to the players.

Unlike most prep stars, local three-star guard Verdell Jones III chose to wait until after the smoke had cleared to select a school. And it wasn't the school most people were expecting him to choose.

The Champaign Central product will be suiting up for a seriously depleted but newly helmed Indiana squad under the direction of Tom Crean.

Despite the fact that the team faces sanctions and only returns three scholarship players, Jones said it was "the best situation for me. They expect me to come in and make a big contribution." He also noted that part of his decision was looking at how well Crean developed his guards at Marquette, a school long known for its outside-the-arc performers.

As the Illinois made its run to the Big Ten Tournament Championship this March, the team was focused on British cartoon characters of the early 20th Century.

Before the tournament, coach Bruce Weber sat the team down for a motivational viewing of Randy Pausch's last lecture, which among other things, extolled the virtues of Tigger.

Big Brown, Big Brown, Big Brown: It’s all you hear in the pre-Derby coverage, the barn buzz, the betting windows. Racing fans are so hot with fervor about this colt, they’re injecting his color into their Derby fashions. How many big brown hats will we see come this Saturday in the mass of color?

There’s no surprise he’s going off as the 3–1 favorite in the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby this Saturday. And he is as remarkable-looking as they say, with his towering conformation, his easy-breezy gallops, his commanding presence, and his perfect record of 3-for-3 with Curlin-esque winning margins. But Big Brown isn’t the only horse in the race, and after drawing the absolute worst post position on Wednesday evening, some handicappers are beginning to sway their bets toward the better-placed horses.

Let’s get three things straight about Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. First, a pet peeve: There is a space between “La” and “Russa.” Second, his lifetime Major League batting average as a middle infielder is one point below the Mendoza Line. Third, and most important, his 2,393 career wins as a Major League manager place him among some select, Hall-of-Fame company: Only Connie Mack and John McGraw have more victories.

Mack, who has won — by far — more games than any other manager in MLB history, 3,731, also has 3,948 losses. I bring this up because wins, as a metric for the success of managers and starting pitchers alike, don’t tell the whole story. And in the case of La Russa, the whole story is worth telling.

Forget about finding a quiet room with a comfortable bed.

If you show up at Urbana’s Holiday Inn tonight, chances are good that comfort’s the last thing on your mind.

At 8:30 p.m., Courage Fighting Championships 11 kicks off. There will be fighting in cages, fighting among men, fighting among women and fighting for the CFC national championship.

Courage Fighting Championships, the full-contact brainchild of Decatur’s Jason Reinhardt, is a breeding ground for talented mixed martial arts fighters looking to climb the ladder into the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the major leagues of ultimate fighting. This is an ascent that’s familiar to the 38-year-old Reinhardt, who’s been practicing martial arts since he was nine years old and who held championship belts in numerous mixed martial arts organizations before making his UFC debut in November 2007.

Champaign County Bikes will be hosting their second annual BikeFest this Sunday, May 4, at Hessel Park in Champaign. Whether you’re an avid cyclist or merely curious about what’s going on in the local bike community, there’s something for everyone.

Starting at 9 a.m., you can choose between four different routes from 10 to 51 miles long in the Pedal Power ride, with proceeds benefiting the Center for Women in Transition.

This past Saturday, Smile Politely was well represented at the Country Music Marathon in Nashville. Okay, maybe well represented isn’t exactly fair to say, but at least there were two of us there: your humble author and SP Editor-in-Chief Chris “I run through ridiculous levels of pain” Maier were among the estimated 35,000 participants clogging the streets of Nashville.

While I was running, I started to think about how great it was to see a city I knew almost nothing about — other than glimpses from Robert Altman’s epic film Nashville — by running 13.1 miles through it (we were actually running the half marathon). It’s kind of surreal to see a place’s landmarks for the first time while groaning and gasping and struggling through a race.

Continuing with the acclaimed series, Caucasian Darlings of the Blogosphere, this week we’ll take a closer look at Brian Bannister of the Kansas City Royals. Many of you White Sox fans probably remember Bannister’s father, Floyd, who went 50–49 for the South Siders from 1983 to 1986. Both father and son are starting pitchers who are a shade over six feet tall and around 200 lbs, but that’s where their similarities on the diamond end. The elder Bannister was a left-handed power pitcher who led the league in strikeouts with the Seattle Mariners in 1982, while the younger is a righty induces outs with a fairly pedestrian high-80’s fastball. In fact, Brian had one of the lowest strikeout rates in the league last year, his rookie season, when he struck out just a hair over 4 batters per 9 innings pitched.

The Cardinals are still hanging in there. The pitching has remained pretty decent to almost great and the hitting has been just good enough to win more than a few ballgames. I would have been much happier if they could have managed to put a hurting on the lowly Giants, but they took two of three from the Astros, so that will suffice. It’s at least better to play tough within your own division. The team still doesn’t seem that great on paper, but since that isn’t where the games are played, I suppose that’s just fine. I’ve been frustrated quite a lot with the managing so far this year, so I feel I should write about that this week.

I’m just going to admit it. Tony LaRussa is smarter than me about baseball.

It might not have been how he was hoping it would happen, but J Leman is still going to try out for a slot on football's biggest stage: the NFL.

After injuring his ankle in the Rose Bowl and having to sit out the East-West Shrine game and the NFL combine, the All-American from Champaign had dropped some stock in the past three months since he led the Illini to their first winning season in six years. After he wasn't picked up in the NFL draft over the past weekend, he was signed as a free agent by the Minnesota Vikings, a team that has no need for any new linebackers at the moment. Leman's position in college, middle linebacker, is firmly held by E.J. Henderson, the Vikings' leading tackler.

If one more good horse is scratched off the Kentucky Derby trail, I swear I’m going to pull an Elvis and shoot my TV. News broke Saturday that Eclipse winning champion War Pass suffered a hairline fracture in his left front ankle and will take a break from racing until it is healed. The injury is not fatal, but it will keep him out of the entire Triple Crown, making War Pass just another head in the list of true competitors scratched off the Derby trail. He joins the company of Georgie Boy and Crown of Thorns, two talented horses who would have greatly improved the quality of the field in the Kentucky Derby were it not for small injuries.

I spend my days editing and acquiring sports non-fiction books. I also often spend my nights reading sports non-fiction books, which makes for a lot of sports reading — probably too much. In light of the arrival of both spring and the baseball season, I’m sharing some recent baseball reads that you may find of interest.

Most middle relievers are faceless automatons, marching in from the bullpen to a generic nu-metal dirge to face a few hitters and disappear into the dugout. Take Mike Stanton, for example. He’s been in the major leagues since 1989, but if you asked me to pick him out of a police lineup, I’m pretty sure I’d guess Curt Leskanic by mistake. That’s what makes Pat Neshek so special: he’s turned a thankless role in the Minnesota Twins’ bullpen into a sort of cult celebrity status in less than two full years in the big leagues.

I guess when you're young, it's easier to watch movies without constantly questioning the director's motives, the lack of script continuity, or significant lapses in credibility. Suspension of disbelief is not required for the young, because the young believe in everything.

For example, I liked Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom when I was thirteen. But when I was thirteen, I didn't demand that plots make sense. I didn't really demand plots, actually. I'm older now, and jaded.

I watched Temple of Doom the other day. It's terrible.

Long Game

I had to start out the column this week talking about the twenty two inning marathon in San Diego last Thursday. It was the longest game in Major League Baseball since Aug. 31, 1993 clocking in at six hours and sixteen minutes. It ended at 3:21 a.m. CST when pitcher and former Cub Glendon Rusch took a called third. I enjoyed the heck out of the Cubs this week, but I’d have to think twice about staying up until past 3 a.m. for a game in April.

Then again, how often do you get chance to see your leadoff man get 10 AB’s in one contest? Another reason why I love this game: No time. No clock. Just innings, top and bottom.

I don’t much care to join the debate over whether the Big Ten Network is in the wrong or Comcast should be blamed for the cable provider’s ongoing refusal to carry the Big Ten Network. Regardless of who is ultimately to blame — and the likely truth is that it’s both of ’em to some degree — I’m still without the Big Ten Network, despite reports that the two sides are close to agreement. The only one getting screwed in this process is me, the fan.

And Comcast hasn’t improved its Q rating by choosing not to pick up an extra twenty Cardinals games that Fox Sports Midwest is offering. On Tuesday night I waited with bated breath for the first-place Cardinals to take on the second-place Brewers. After all, this was the first time in the last fifty years (and, quite possibly, ever) of Major League Baseball that two opposing teams would each bat the pitcher eighth in the order. (Yes, these are the sorts of thrills that I look forward to on a daily basis.)

I would start a barroom brawl in the defense of my Derby horse if he was unjustly criticized, and that’s nearly what happened on the rail at Keeneland when a drunken ox with an ape brain shouted, “No Derby for you, huh, number seven!”

Yes, at that moment, I about lost it. It was not a good day for Pyro, (number seven for those people who can’t read letters), who went off as the even money favorite at 1–1 in the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes. Coming off two impressive wins in Louisiana, Pyro descended upon synthetic track for the first time and met disaster.

Two weeks into the season, and everything remains convoluted in the AL Central. Up is down, white is black, and the Royals are decent. Let’s make a run-through of the standings from top to bottom:

Chicago White Sox (8–5): The Sox are using the same combination so far this season that led to their World Series title in 2005: pitching and the long ball. Gavin Floyd was effectively wild on a frigid Saturday afternoon, taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the Tigers before combining with a couple of relievers on a two-hit shutout. A.J. Pierzynski is still tearing things up to the tune of a .412 batting average and .737 slugging percentage, both of which lead the AL. Joe Crede has also come back from back surgery to get off to a great start, hitting two grand slams already this season.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m very happy and somewhat surprised by the Cardinals so far this season.

Sure, we’re towards the top of the standings, but that’s not why I’m happy necessarily. We’ve had great pitching thus far, and though that gives me a nervous thrill, that’s not even why I’m happy. Our hitting looks functional and our defense looks vastly improved, but even those things aren’t really why I’m so happy with the redbirds.

I’m happy because they are once again fun to watch.

A Quick Note About Detroit

A trip around the second week of the season and nothing is particularly out of the ordinary. The biggest surprise remains the Tigers horrid start, and while still too early to mean much, the more concerning part for Detroit shouldn’t be that they’ve lost ten of their first twelve games, but how they’ve lost the games.

They are getting punished.

The well-publicized injuries in their bullpen have left them scrambling. A quick glance at their pen’s ERA and you’ll see ballooned figures like Zach Minor at 11.57 or ex-cub Francis Beltran at 7.36. What’s worse is that they put the D-Train on the DL yesterday. It’s too early to hit the panic button, but let’s just say I’m glad that 2–10 is not happening to the Cubbies.

No one pegged the Cardinals to win the N.L. Central this year, but after ten games they find themselves atop the division, a half-game ahead of the Brewers and the streaking Cubs. You can put me among those skeptics. I felt this team had as much of a chance of winning the division as Neifi Perez had in finding his stroke, landing with the Yankees, displacing Alex Rodriguez at third base and making his first All-Star team. (I don’t think they currently market that strong of a performance-enhancing drug.)

It’s a topsy-turvy AL Central after one week of play. Here are the standings as of this morning:

Chicago White Sox 5–2
Kansas City Royals 5–2
Cleveland Indians 4–4
Minnesota Twins 3–5
Detroit Tigers 0–7

The biggest surprise in the standings above is, of course, the Tigers. Detroit went into the season as the prohibitive favorite in the division, after upgrading at third base (Miguel Cabrera > Brandon Inge), shortstop (Edgar Renteria > Carlos Guillen), first base (Carlos Guillen > Sean Casey), and fourth starter (Dontrelle Willis > cracked bat > Mike Maroth). It’s much too early to give up on the Tigers, but frustration is clearly mounting in Detroit.

Bill Self brought glory back to Lawrence, KS last night as the Jayhawks performed a miracle comeback against the Memphis Tigers, eventually sealing the victory in overtime with strong play from Mario Chalmers, the Final Four's MOP. It was Kansas' first title since 1988 when Danny Manning (and the Miracles) defeated Oklahoma 84–79.

How does this relate to us in the cornfields of Illini Nation?

First week in the books

The first official week of baseball is now complete and we learned, once again, why the experts get paid the big bucks. Let’s start in Detroit where the Tigers thanked all sportswriters near and far for picking them to win the World Series by starting the season 0–6. And then of course, ladies and gentleman, let me present to you your 2008 St. Louis Cardinals. Picked by many for fifth place in the lowly NL central. How about a 5–1 opening week with the best ERA in the league? What does the Tigers opening flop and the Redbirds strong start mean?

Nothing, of course.

This is baseball. 156 games to go.

Finally, games that count have arrived. For better or worse, that means the Cardinals took the field this week. The Redbirds then promptly played in a game that didn’t count, an Opening Day rainout that washed away an Albert Pujols home run. Funny how that happens. Opening Day redux ended with Rockies starter Kip Wells getting the best of his former team. Ouch. But St. Louis rebounded to take the series with a win on Thursday. All told, they allowed the reigning N.L. champs just five runs in three games.

Getting back to my last column — a silly expedition in selecting the best players in the N.L. Central — I must carry on where I left off and identify the pitchers who will surely shine this season, given my blessing. We’ll start with a rotation, then build a pen.