wallace112On occasion, Big League Stew honors a birthday boy per week by taking a longer look at his career. Please join us in lighting the candles.

Bobby Wallace may be the greatest shortstop you've never heard of. "Perhaps the greatest defensive shortstop of his generation," as he is called by Scott Schul of the Society for American Baseball Research, Wallace is little-remembered today because he played 20 of his 25 seasons with two defunct teams, the Cleveland Spiders (who folded after 1899) and the St. Louis Browns (who moved to Baltimore in 1954).

Moreover, Wallace played nine of his 25 seasons before the establishment of the modern World Series in 1903. Along with George Sisler and Rick Ferrell, he is one of only three representatives of the St. Louis Browns in the Hall of Fame.

What's interesting is that Wallace left Cleveland under shady circumstances. The owners of the Spiders also owned the St. Louis Perfectos (who were renamed the Cardinals in 1900), and they decided to shift all

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In his 33 years in the manager's seat, Tony La Russa managed three teams to six pennants and three World Series titles. Over the course of his tenure, he managed 625 players, seven of whom made it to the Hall of Fame and several others who have strong cases, including Albert Pujols, who's already a first-ballot no-brainer. Tony simply managed too many stars for us to present a list of his best players that cut off at his uniform number, No. 10, so here we present the 20 best players that Tony La Russa ever skippered to success.

Note: The * designates a Hall of Fame member who will soon be joined in Cooperstown by La Russa himself. All listed stats compiled in the player's time under TLR.

20. Ozzie Smith* .282/.358/.370, 2 HR, 18 RBI, 7 SB, 5 CS, 1.5 rWAR
19. Goose Gossage* 4-7, 69 G, 85 2/3 IP, 3.78 ERA, 0.8 rWAR
18. Steve Carlton* 4-3, 10 G, 63 1/3 IP, 3.69 ERA, 0.8 rWAR
These three players are all in the Hall of Fame, so it would have been hard to leave them off the list, but Tony

Note: This is an updated version of a post that originally ran in October 2010.

The Texas Rangers franchise goes back to the 1961 expansion Washington Senators, and has played in Texas since 1972. But after two indifferent decades in which the team never finished higher than second, the franchise's fortunes turned forever in the late '80s: First, George W. Bush purchased a share of the team in 1989, and then, Jose Canseco joined the club in 1992. Their appearances marked the start of a new generation of stars who brought the club to its first playoff appearances, then fell under the cloud of steroid suspicion.

With the franchise on the brink of its second straight World Series appearance, we took a look at the greatest Texas Rangers in team history, and they split along three eras: The wilderness of the '70s and '80s, the inflated '90s and '00s and the just-born renaissance.

Note: All the italicized stats below are totals for their time in a Rangers uniform, not career numbers.

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Casual baseball fans might not realize it, but the St. Louis Cardinals have the second-most World Series titles in baseball history. They have 16 members of the Hall of Fame, 14 players and two managers. Six of the players are listed below, a seventh will almost certainly make it (Albert Pujols), and the remaining three are among the most deserving players who have not been elected to the Hall. (They are only "among" the most deserving, because none of their names is Ron Santo or Tim Raines, but still.)

The Cardinals have been in the National League since 1892 and they have won 10 world championships in that time, the only team other than the Yankees in double digits. Every decade or two, they have an iconic team, from the 1934 Gashouse Gang to the 1982 Whiteyball team led by Ozzie Smith and manager Whitey Herzog, to the La Russa-Pujols Cardinals, who have been one of the most consistently excellent teams of the past decade. With Ozzie, they had the greatest defensive shortstop in

turnerfieldMac Thomason, the first Braves blogger on the web, has been fighting cancer for nearly three years, and he just suffered his worst setback yet. Several of his longtime readers and friends, including me, have asked the Atlanta Braves to recognize his role in building the online Braves community and to ask for help in his fight.

Thomason founded his blog, Braves Journal, in 1998, before the word "blog" even existed.

This was his first blog post, published on April 4, 1998:

Walt Weiss has a pulled hamstring. Which means that Rafael Belliard gets to play every day for the time being, since no one else on the team can play shortstop. Graffanino's played two games there in his major league career. With Andruw struggling, the Braves should probably consider hitting the pitcher seventh for the time being.

From the very beginning, Mac has combined sabermetric insight with a puckish sense of humor, keeping Braves fans warm through the long, cold winters and hot, sticky summers, years in which

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As the postseason continues, Big League Stew's Alex Remington will take a look at the statistics that might make a difference in each series.

.744 The total NLDS OPS of the Cardinals' Big Three, Albert Pujols, Lance Berkman, and Matt Holliday, with one homer, four doubles, and five RBI. Of the three, Pujols had some success, hitting .350, but with no homers and only one RBI. The vaunted Cardinal offense didn't do a great deal against Philadelphia's pitching, as the Redbirds actually got outscored 21-19 in their victory in five games. Instead, Cardinal pitching did yeoman's work keeping the Phillies off the board, holding the Phillies to a combined 10 runs scored from Games Two through Five. {YSP:MORE}

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48 The combined number of runs scored in the five games of the Brewers-Diamondbacks Series, most of any of the divisional series. As a matter of fact, in every single series, the team that emerged victorious managed to win despite having been outscored: the Rays outscored the

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As the postseason continues, Big League Stew's Alex Remington will take a look at the statistics that might make a difference in each series.

8.25 The Detroit Tigers' bullpen ERA during their 3-2 series victory over the Yankees in the ALDS. Jose Valverde (aka Papa Grande) converted both of his save chances and improved his year-long save total to 51 in 51 opportunities — but he still had a 6.00 ERA because he came in to close out Game 2, with a four-run lead and thus no save situation, and gave up two runs. Setup man Joaquin Benoit has been reliable for them all season, and allowed just one earned run in 3 2/3 innings during the series, a 2.45 ERA. But the rest of their colleagues —Daniel Schlereth, Phil Coke and Al Alburquerque — did not have the type of series the Tigers wanted.

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4.15 The Rangers' bullpen ERA. The Rangers committed to a serious midseason bullpen makeover, acquiring prime setup men Koji Uehara and Mike Adams from the Orioles and Padres, and paying a pretty penny

BravesdetentionlectureAs the regular season winds down, 22 teams are facing an offseason filled with golf rounds and hot-stove strategery.

But we're not going to let them get off that easy. No sir. No way. In an attempt to bring some closure between franchise and follower, we're giving a blogger from each team the opportunity to detain their squads for the equivalent of a Saturday morning detention stay.

Up next in the series is our own Alex Remington, the Atlanta Braves expert around these parts. He sure does miss having Bobby Cox around.

Gentlemen, you just completed one of the worst chokes in American history. Congratulations. Now, everyone who thinks they have something to contribute in 2012, please take your seats.

Not so fast, Larry Parrish and Derek Lowe. Mr. Parrish, the Braves offense plummeted so fast and so far during your one-year tenure as hitting coach — from first in the NL in OBP, all the way down to 10th — that we're letting you go even though manager Fredi Gonzalez publicly announced that