In what’s becoming a recurring theme of the 2010 season for the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony La Russa is again complaining about something that happened in the game against the Washington Nationals yesterday.

In the 9th inning, Nationals rookie reliever Drew Storen lost control of a fastball when pitching to Matt Holliday. The pitch sailed behind the batter. La Russa said, “If somebody throws the ball behind you, you’re not happy. Especially up in that area. If you don’t have that kind of command, it wasn’t intentional, then you don’t belong in this league.”

La Russa has made similar complaints before. I remember him making even harsher statements once when Reds pitcher Aaron Harang threw a wild pitch. Strangely, I never hear of other teams managers making the same criticisms when Cardinals pitchers throw wild pitches.

Of course, this is coming from a manager with a DWI on his record. I could make a cheap shot about how someone who can’t control their alcohol consumption doesn’t belong in the league. However, I’ll instead sit back and enjoy the Cardinals meltdown this year. For all of their “bitching and moaning” seems to do nothing more than cause them to lose focus and fall further and further behind the Reds. They lost that game to the Nationals yesterday.

One of the perks of the Cincinnati Reds Reds Heads Kids Club is that the kids get to go to one of six autograph sessions with one of the Reds players. This season, my son Winter has been interested in collecting Reds signatures on the back of his 2010 Reds Heads jersey, and yesterday was the session he chose.

The player for each of the signings is never announced too far in advance. It’s impossible to know which player will be with the team and healthy for each signing. I overheard one of the workers talking about a previous session where the player was sent down to the minors just before the signing, leaving them scrambling to find someone else. Yesterday, no such scramble occurred. A day after his first Major League home run, Chris Valaika was signing for kids club members in the Reds Hall of Fame.

Valaika’s signature gave Winter his 13th signature this year. They’ve been collected all over, including Reds Caravan stops, Spring Training, and Opening Night. If he wants to do the same thing next year, we’ll definitely want to spend some time with him at RedsFest.

Boxscore

The St. Louis Cardinals have been having a terrible time of it lately. First, they lose a series to the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates. Yesterday, they headed to Washington, D.C. to take on the last-place Washington Nationals and again fell. Although this time, it took them 13 innings to lose.

Chris Carpenter, who will no doubt have difficulty explaining the loss to his child, started for the Cardinals. If it weren’t for the unearned runs, he would have had a quality start, as he pitched 6 innings and allowed 3 earned runs. Unfortunately, Felipe Lopez is an everyday player for St. Louis. And as Reds fans remember all too well, he can have problems throwing the ball, as he did in the 3rd, which led to 3 unearned runs scoring.

St. Louis did take the lead back after that error, thanks to Albert Pujols’ 400th career home run. But it wasn’t enough. Carpenter and the bullpen could not keep the Nationals from scoring. Going into the top of the 9th, Washington was ahead 8-6. It was time for another of the Cardinals patented come-this-close-to-winning comebacks.

Except that this time, the Cardinals actually did take the lead. Brendan Ryan doubled in a run, Matt Holliday was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to tie it, and then Randy Winn drove in a go-ahead run and an insurance run with a single.

It wasn’t enough for closer Ryan Franklin, though, who allowed the Nationals to tie it on a 2-run shot by Roger Bernadino. The game went into extras and nobody scored until the bottom of the 13th when Ian Desmond hit the walk-off single.

The loss drops the Cardinals to 4 games behind the first-place Reds. They have now lost 3 in a row. Most troubling may be that 2 of those games were started by their big guns–Adam Wainwright and Carpenter. Their record for their last 10 is 3-7.

Boxscore

Wow. Two games in a row that weren’t worth staying up until tomorrow for. Thank goodness I didn’t.

The San Francisco Giants again beat down the Cincinnati Reds, hard and fast. This time Travis Wood was the starting pitcher to get rocked. He did last quite a bit longer than Volquez did the night before, but it was still a horrible outing, with 7 earned runs over 4 innings. Mike Leake made his second relief appearance and was also terrible, and did nothing more than supply the Giants with brass knuckles. Over 1/3 of an inning, Leake allowed 6 runs on 6 hits, 2 of which were home runs. The outing was so bad that there’s now talk of shutting him down for the season. Recent callup Sam LeCure got in on the run-allowing action, too, giving up 3 in his 3 innings. Only Nick Masset showed competence last night.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The offense was solid. At least, I think 5 runs is a good showing. Heck, they scored 3 to get within 2 in the 5th before Mike Leake came in. In the 5th, Brandon Phillips hit his second solo shot of the evening. Then a few batters later, Scott Rolen launched a two-run home run. That was all for the rest of the game. I imagine the massive amounts of runs the bullpen was leaking didn’t provide much incentive to score.

This marks the first series the Reds have lost since being swept by the Cardinals. The good news is that this road trip had just one game left, the Reds will have a winning record on it, and that they will return home in first place. The season isn’t over; the Reds have simply had 2 bad games in a row. It happens, and if past performance is any predictor of the future, then this team will bounce back. And hopefully, it’ll be today.

Unafraid of the curse, Joey Votto will appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated on August 30, 2010.

I’m about as unsuperstitious as they come, but I will point out that the last Red to appear on the cover of this magazine was Ken Griffey, Jr., and we all know how that turned out.

It’s a common for magazine covers to have numerals in their headlines. For some reason, plugging stories like “5 Easy Ways to Lose Your Gut at the Game” and “The 0 Best Places for Ball Park Sushi” are just really appealing to readers.

But this cover features only one numeral: the 19 on Votto’s chest. Even the secondary story about the kindergartner-slugger breaks AP style by spelling out an age. Apparently that 19 carries a lot of weight all on its own.

That, and the come-hither look Votto’s giving the newstand passer-by, a smoldering look that seems to say, “Me? Cursed? I’ve already survived Dusty Baker: I’m untouchable.”

It’s the end of an era.

Sunday, Lou Piniella hung up his spikes to spend more time with his family. His 90-year old mother is apparently ailing, and a guy has to have his priorities.

According to the press release, Piniella won three Manager of the Year Awards, including in 2008 with the Cubs. He’s retiring as the 14th winningest manager in Major League history.

Will he be back in a few years to climb up to lucky number 13? Retirement can get awful boring.

Also from the press release:

“to the Cubs fans, thank you for four wonderful seasons. You are the best, most deserving fans in all of baseball and it has been an honor to manage your ballclub.”

Well, I don’t know about that, but it was a nice thing to say.

The Cubs organization has promoted third-base coach Mike Quade to fill in the manager role, and to celebrate, the Cubs went to town on the Nationals. Sure, it’s just the Nationals, but I’m sure Cubs nation is looking for this to spark the team to get back in this NLC race. Hope springs eternal, and that would be a pretty sweet send off for Sweet Lou.

Yesterday, the St. Louis Cardinals lost their 5th game in a row. And from a distance, it does have the feel of a spectacular implosion. Tony LaRussa’s losing his cool and bitching and moaning about the strike zone.

“We had a great chance in the ninth, and MLB can go ahead and fine [me], I don’t care, but there were several strikes a guy as good as Brian Wilson got, he doesn’t need. Who knows how that inning would have been? You know they are supposed to review that stuff and they are supposed to fine you if you say anything about it, but that is just not right,” said LaRussa.

I can understand his frustration at losing. But can you imagine Albert Pujols? Viva El Birdos attempts to, taking into account the recent acquisition of Pedro Feliz and the end of Pujols’ contract after the 2010 season.

what on earth do you think albert is thinking as he looks around the infield and sees pedro feliz at third, felipe lopez at short, and aaron miles at second? “i have arrived in the eighth circle of hell” [except in spanish]?

i guarantee that it is not: “i should sign a below-market value contract for the next eight or so years so that i can ensure that this continues to happen to me.” [except in spanish]

Tonight the Cardinals are sending their best–and bitchiest–player, Chris Carpenter, to the mound to attempt to stop the losing. But the San Francisco Giants are sending out Tim Lincecum. The game is on the MLB network now in many areas, including mine. I would recommend tuning in, for the bitching and the good baseball.