Return of the Annual Summer Ballpark Trip

Per tradition, my dad and I made the trip to St. Louis for the Cardinals' Hall of Fame celebration. The trip out was straightforward, with no significant traffic snarl-ups. The weather was tremendous - upper 70s in the afternoon is atypical for Missouri in August, but welcome.

This year's induction class was Mort Cooper, Scott Rolen, and Jason Isringhausen. Rolen is easily the player I have the fondest memories of, between his hitting and superb defense at third. Pity he couldn't avoid injuring his shoulders in collisions with other players (Alex Cintron in the 2002 NLDS, and Hee-Seop Choi in 2005). Cooper played well before my time, and Isringhausen always felt like a highwire act trying to close out games, even though he was a major upgrade over the closers the Cards trotted out in the late '90s (I'm having bad flashbacks of Jeff Brantley and Ricky Bottalico). I imagine most fans feel like that about their team's closer. Maybe not Yankee fans when it came to Mariano Rivera, although you could tell me they jumped all over him each time he gave up a hit and I'd believe it.

My dad noted not as many of the past inductees showed up this year, but given Bob Gibson and Lou Brock are both having health issues, and Whitey Herzog's in his 80s (and doesn't have a connection to any of three inductees), maybe not a surprise.

The Cards were up against the Rockies. St. Louis started Dakota Hudson, while the Rockies sent out Chi Chi Gonzalez, who I knew nothing about, but his numbers weren't good. He proved they were an accurate representation of his skills. In the bottom of the first, he walked Dexter Fowler, then gave up a single to Kolten Wong. Mike Shildt has decided to try the revolutionary tactic of putting the hitters with the best on-base percentages at the top of his lineup, instead of Tommy Edman or the desiccated corpse of Matt Carpenter. Paul Goldschmidt advanced both of them with a sac fly to center, then Marcell Ozuna drove them in with a single to left. 2-0 Cardinals.

Hudson gave up a leadoff double to Daniel Murphy in the second, but Murphy didn't get any further. Murphy is out of the Jeff Bagwell school of batting stances; legs set widely apart and kind of crouching. He's not as extreme as Bagwell, who I saw described once as looking like he was seated on a toilet, but Murphy's at least halfway there.

Edman walked to start the bottom of the second, then Harrison Bader hit a homer to the left field stands, 4-0 Cardinals. After that Gonzalez settled down for a few innings, retiring 9 of the next 10 batters, but the damage was done. Other than Murphy and Ryan McMahon drawing consecutive walks with one out in the 4th, the Rockies never threatened against Hudson again. And after those walks, he got Ian Desmond to ground the ball back to him for a double play. Hudson doesn't strike out many batters, and he walks too many, but he can get ground balls, and the Cards have a good infield defense.

The wheels fell off for Gonzalez in the 5th, as he walked Fowler, then let him advance to second on a wild pitch. Wong popped out, but then Goldschmidt and Ozuna walked, loading the bases. Gonzalez was done, and in came DJ Johnson. Paul DeJong hit a liner to right, which Charlie Blackmon caught but let fall out of his glove. Fowler scored, although Ozuna was forced out at second. Second time in the game DeJong got on-base at Ozuna's expense. Somehow Blackmon dropping the ball was not scored as an error. The fuck?!

I mentioned to my dad earlier I had no idea what constituted a balk (he said he wasn't sure the umps knew either), and I really don't know what counts as an error anymore. Anyway, even after Johnson walked Molina to load the bases again, Edman popped up to end the inning, so the Cards scored only one run. 5-0 StL.

Hudson left after 6 innings, and they brought in Tyler Webb. He struck out the first two, then gave up a ground-rule double and a single. Fowler did a good job cutting off the single to keep Desmond at third. Shildt decided not to mess around and brought in Giovanny Gallegos, the team's best reliever. He struck out Yonathan Daza looking, and when Daza threw his bat down, he was immediately ejected.

In the bottom of the 7th, Goldschmidt his a solo homer to make it 6-0, then Ozuna hit a single and advanced to third on another single by Molina. Edman popped out again to waste the opportunity. But the Rockies went down in order in the 8th and 9th, so it was fine.

In some ways, this might have been the dullest of these summer games I attended. It wasn't against a division rival. It didn't feature any particularly outstanding performances, like Alex Reyes' first major league start in 2016, or Ichiro setting the professional league hits record in 2015. There wasn't any tension about whether the Cards could hold on or come from behind. It was kind of over by the end of the second, which is fine. It was a relaxing viewing experience.

Other notes:

- Right before Goldschmidt's home run, Wong fouled a ball off his foot and had to leave the game. It's not fractured, but had to be helped off the field. Matt Carpenter finished his at-bat, then stayed in to play third, while Edman moved to second. Last year, Wong got hit on the forearm when Wade Miley tried to pick him off first base, except his first baseman wasn't there to catch the ball. He had to leave the game at the end of that inning. Maybe Wong should sit out these games in the future.

- It's "Players' Weekend", and so in addition to the hideous all white uniforms the Cardinals were wearing, their jerseys also had their nicknames on the back. These fall into two categories. One is the shorter version of their name. Dexter Fowler is "Dex", Ian Desmond is "Desi". The others are the more random stuff. Rockies' catcher Tony Wolters had "Paper Emoji" as his nickname. I think he had the actual emoji on his jersey, but that was how it was announced over the PA. Tony "Paper Emoji" Wolters. Charlie Blackmon was "Chuck Nazty", and I couldn't see the "t" originally so I saw "Chuck Naz-" and was like, whoa, really? Maybe avoid nickname words that start with N-A-Z.

- Wong's nickname was "TheWongOne808". He must have thought they wanted his e-mail account password instead.

- My dad stated these are probably these guys' baseball nicknames, but not their actual nicknames. I pointed out you couldn't have 15 guys on a team with the word "Stinky" on the back of their jersey. Then we started rattling off nicknames. Stumpy, Badger, etc.,

- Twice when Fowler came to bat, they played "Hakuna Matata" for his walk-up music. The time in between, they played "Hard Knock Life". I don't know.

- Tommy Edman has some version of "Feeling Good". I'm not sure it's Nina Simone's (probably is), but at least it isn't Michael Buble's. They have a version of this song on The Saboteur, and it was my favorite song to cruise around with on that game.

- The people next me to didn't show up until the top of the 4th. The people on the other side of my dad didn't arrive until the bottom of the 4th. What the hell is even the point at that stage?!

- The lady sitting behind us opined that Paul DeJong would be the most interesting person on the team to have a conversation with, not even about baseball, just anything. Then later she got mad about Ozuna for, I guess, not running hard enough on the Molina single that moved him to third. The throw was fairly close, but I didn't think it was that big a deal. 

- My dad hated the design for the hats they were giving away. When we discussed going to the game a few weeks ago, to make sure we were both still going, he described them as ugly. Then he amended that to, "Ugly to me, you might like them." I'm not sure if I should be insulted by that.

- They aren't very good looking, that's for sure. On the way out of the stadium, I decided they look like snowy reception on a TV screen. St. Louis Cardinals meets The Outer Limits. "We can control the horizontal and the vertical, but not at the same time, which is why Hudson walks so many guys."

- On the drive home, somewhere west of 270, we got into some discussion of hemorrhoids, or rather, my dad started on about this, and how people used to use Preparation H on their faces before there was botox. He said he couldn't understand who thought that was a good idea, but botox is a literally toxic substance they inject into their face to kill cells, so is that really any better? I can not for the life of me remember how we got onto that topic.