Carter Capps and Chance Ruffin and Tinkerbell Bag

The Cardinals won twelve to two
I’m cooked
Now this blog is through …

The preceding little ditty was Anne’s suggestion for tonight’s blog post, but I think that I can do better. I know that I can at least babble on longer. We walked up to Stratton’s near the Ritz Carlton in Clayton and had breakfast. There seemed to be a statistically improbable preponderance of little girls there. After breakfast we walked to the Forsyth Metrolink station and took the train down to the ballpark. The park had just opened, but instead of batting practice, hundreds of fans were circling the warning path. Today was run the bases day, but that was not scheduled until after the game. This was some sort of cancer fundraiser. We had primo seats, just four rows back from the left field line, three sections outfield from the Mariner’s dugout.

There were a few Mariner players warming-up on the grass, one of them was Carter Capps, a handsome young man, who was very kind to all of the fans. Too bad he couldn’t complete even a third of an inning. A little later Morales and another Mariner were playing catch. The other Mariner threw high and the ball would have landed among a pack of little boys standing by the foul wall if Morales hadn’t thrown up his mitt to knock the ball down. He then proceeded to scold his teammate. I’ve chosen Chance Ruffin’s choice of luggage as the eye wash for this post. He, Capps and the rest of the bullpen were marching out to their station, beyond the left field wall. One-by-one, they would make their way back to the mound. It is certainly not standard MLB fare. I would love to know the back-story on it. Is it his daughter’s bag? Is it a road trip charm? Is it some sort of initiation? Is it a Seattle thing? Youth wants to know!

Molina homered in the second. He had a great day! He was pulled in the eighth and his new backup made his Major League debut. Anne reminded me that we had seen Molina’s debut too. The first time he came up to bat, his batting average was 0.000. The second time it was 1.000. The third time it was 0.500. The rest is history. His replacement never got a chance to bat.

The Mariners tied it in the fourth. Then the dam began to break loose. The Cards scored four in the fourth, four in the fifth and three in the seventh, to one answering run. We here in Saint Louis expected the Mariners to be pushovers. After all, they are near cellar dwellers. But they weren’t. We just barely beat them on Friday, on Saturday we lost and now we’re tied with the Pirates again. Where are some ninjas when you really need them? Those pesky Pirates! I would like to give a shout out to Mariner pitcher, Bobby ‘the raspberry’ LaFromboise. Your name rocks! I wish that your baseball career goes well, so that fans both for and against will be able to give you the raspberry for many years to come. I’d also like to give a shout out to pitcher John Axford of the Cardinals. That name sounds almost strangely familiar, right Dad? This post is kind of sloppy and a little bit all over the map, but so was today’s pitching, what with the Mariners hitting three batsmen.