Duck!
The St. Louis Cardinals made this announcement today.

“Due to poor weather and forecasted, continued, rainy conditions, the regularly scheduled “B” game between the Cardinals and Marlins has been cancelled. No makeup date has been scheduled yet. Oh, and Rick Ankiel’s not going to pitch anymore, he’s going to move to the outfield. So sayeth Lord Tony. That is all.”

Nothing to see here. Nothing at all.

Sure, this is sad for Rick. He seems like a nice kid. By all accounts he’s a class guy. He even bakes cakes to take with him when he visits his dad at the Big House.

It’s all about perspective. Mel Brooks defined comedy and tragedy this way (I know I’ve used this quote before, but screw you, it’s a good one), “Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole.”

In 2000, Rick Ankiel looked like the next great lefty. He went 11-7 with a 3.50 ERA in the regular season and he was only 20 years old. Life was good.

Then, he started game one of the NLDS against the Braves and Greggie Maddux and set a playoff record with FIVE wild pitches in one inning. He also set the playoff record with nine wild pitches in one series. Hey, it’s not like it was historic or anything. They only started keeping those records in 1890.

He pitched in 2001 and has horrific. He was Andy Pratt-bad. He was 1-2 with a 7.13 ERA in seven starts walking 25 guys in 24 innings, and we wouldn’t see him again until last September.

And now, apparently, it’s over. He pitched in the minor leagues last year and made only a handful of starts . The Cardinals sent him to Puerto Rico this winter, a curious move given he’s only two years removed from Tommy John surgery and he pitched well, but was sent home early with a sore elbow. The Genius assured everyone that Rick was fine. He was so fine that they had to cut a batting practice session short last week because Rick was hitting everything in the cage but the strike zone, and the Cardinals were worried one of their hitters was going to get hurt. That’s a good sign.

What’s so odd about this? Phenoms fizzle every year. Guys like Josh Hamilton and Jeff Allison will never even experience anything close to the one season of brilliance that Ankiel did. The Cubs alone have blown out more arms than you can shake a…uh…tree full of blown out arms at.

But it’s the idea that this failure was so sudden, so complete and so unexpected, and that it happened on Tony LaRussa’s watch that makes it so delicious.

He’s The Genius! Stuff like this doesn’t happen to him! He’s impervious to such things.

This is the same organization that was so quick to mock the Cubs for the way they handled Kerry Wood’s recovery from Tommy John surgery. They claimed the way they were doing it with Matt Morris was the answer. Move him to the bullpen. Don’t take him too much.

Never mind the fact that Dr. Frank Jobe warned the Cardinals that retraining Morris to go from a starter to surgery to the bullpen to become a starter again would tax his arm more than just slowly building his innings as a starter. Oh, and wait…did Kerry or Matt have another operation this winter? Why, I think it was Matt, wasn’t it?

(Never mind the fact that the Cubs are doing to Ryan Dempster exactly what the Cardinals did to Morris. Just ignore that. Because, really, does anybody care if Ryan Dempster’s arm falls off? Really? Sure you don’t, you’re still mad at him for walking Eric Valent and Jason Phillips on September 25 aren’t you? I know I am. At the Cubs Convention I tried to bore a hole through his rotator cuff with my eyes. I don’t think it worked. But you never know. Wait, how much of this is out loud? Did I say anything about the time in college when I woke up, pantless, on the Annie Glidden Road median? I didn’t? Good. That would have been embarrassing.)

It’ll be interesting to see what the Cardinals do with Rick now. He’s out of options (how about a Dave Kelton for Rick Ankiel swap?) and while he’s always been a good hitting pitcher, it’s beyond foolish to think that he can learn how to play the outfield and learn to hit like a big leaguer while sitting on the bench in St. Louis all season. Why, only an arrogant jackass would think he could pull that off.

I call this one Edmond and this one Albertito!

—————

We talked about this during the CubsLive on Monday, but it’s worth repeating, because given the recent track record of ESPN, factchecking is not their forte.

Gary Thorne, best known for mangling hockey on ESPN, went off on a p.o.’d tangent about a “report out of Boston” that Nomar Garciaparra said he didn’t want his Red Sox World Series ring. Thorne sounded like Nomar had gone to John Henry’s house and stabbed Henry’s dog to death with a butter knife. Thorne couldn’t have been more indignant if he was wearing clown makeup and dancing on the roof of a limo.

Dance, freak!  Dance!

Here’s the report Gary was talking about.

Notice, it’s from the always reliable Boston Dirt Dogs. When the Boston Globe “acquired” them last year, they made a big deal about how they’d hold them to the same ethical standards they do the rest of the newsroom. Well, apparently they meant Mike Barnicle, because as a test, a woman sent in a completely bogus story about Nomar figuring that if they were telling the truth, they’d find out it was fake, or at least, be unable to prove it was true and not run it. Instead they ran it.

And so, a guy named Bruce Allen who runs a site called “Boston Media Watch” ran this column showing the Dirt Dogs article to be completely made up.

Nomar caught wind of Thorne’s indignance during the game (somebody must have called him on the golf course where after the second inning he was no doubt joined by starting pitcher Greg Maddux) and had The Panozzo call in to an always tipsy Rick Sutcliffe to set the record straight.

But here’s the thing, how does something like that get into an ESPN broadcast as fact in the first place? Are they that much of a sham now that they can’t even fact check something that they know beforehand they’re going to use? It’s not like a fan handed Thorne a piece of paper with a URL written on it during the telecast. He knew he was going to bring it up.

Then again, ESPN also just hired the completely unintelligible Scoop Jackson to write for Page 2. Scoop joins Stu Scott, Screamin’ A. Smith, Chris Berman and a cast of thousands on the Worldwide Leader in their neverending quest to hire people who are ready-made self parodies.

ESPN also is set to announce a shake-up on Cold Pizza. So if you are the one who watches the show (there has to be one, right?), Kit Hoover is being “reassigned” to other ESPN duties (which, given her hideous, bassmouthed visage, is hopefully changing the oil on the ESPN fleet vehicles), and Thea Andrews (who is superhot) is going to host some dumbass ESPN Hollywood show that they plan on cramming down our throats this year sometime.

Apparently, Woody Paige and Skippy will stay on the show, and maybe one will cannibalize the other? We can hope.