Last night I got together with my buddy Brando for the first time in weeks. It was six hours of total baseball.
The Shot Heard ‘Round the World
We sat down and watched The Shot Heard ‘Round the World. That’s the HBO Sports movie about Bobby Thomson’s homerun against Ralph Branca. Very good documentary. I’m a sucker for watching any footage about baseball’s past and this one didn’t disappoint. Check it out if you get a chance.
By the way, I never heard about the controversy regarding the Giants stealing signs during the 51 season and playoffs. That charge was levied by NYG catcher Sal Yvars and denied by everyone else. Anyway, that was new to me.
For those interested, here is the box score of that game.
Cubs/Cards game
After that we settled down to watch the Cubs defeat the Cardinals. The Cubs managed to eke a victory out. Up by a run, Demster managed to force Pujols to ground out with a runner on second.
Far be for me to spit at success but Brando and I got into a discussion about whether it was the right move to pitch to Pujols. Brando felt strongly that Pujols should have been walked intentionally. I’m not a big advocate of the intentional walk especially when it puts the winning run on base. But as an APBA league manager who has had Albert on his team since he was a rookie, I knew what Brando was getting at. A.P certainly should not have gotten any good pitches to hit and the second Dempster pitch looked pretty juicy.
For what it’s worth, Bleed Cubbie Blue felt the right decision was made to pitch to Pujols.
Hindsight is 20/20 and the Cubs went 3-1 for the series.
FYI, on http://www.sportscave.com, I always write an article immediately preceeding every Cubs/Cards series, so you should check it out. Wrote one last Thursday, which you could check out.