I have to get one of those bobbleheads...so jealous.
-Sin

Sorry for the shipping delay, Duk. Glad you like it!

The hireJimEssian site is pretty vulgar; it amazes me the depths of wretched bitterness Cubs fans will allow themselves to feel, rather than drop the team.
Still, it was informative to see these people's takes on Mark DeRosa. I knew he couldn't possibly be universally as popular as Wrigleyvillagers made him feel in his first return in a Cleveland uni. It'll be fun to see whether they keep it up in his return in a St. Louis uni 07.10-12, Friday through Sunday before the All-Star Game.
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Meanwhile, DeRosa got excessive Cardinal love in his poor debut yesterday in a weak StL loss to Minnesota. This is due to a mix of factors:
1. The Cardinals have gotten spotty results in 2009 from all sorts of OF-IN combinations, with Troy Glaus (3B) out until who knows when and OF power brownouts from Ryan Ludwick and Rick Ankiel, resulting in all sorts of Tony La Russa personnel juggling and platooning and shuttling people back and forth to Memphis. The feeling has long been that someone like Mark DeRosa, in particular, could more than competently plug many of the gaps that have emerged.
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2. Cardinal fans and sportswriters had been afraid that the front office would not energetically address the 2009 gaps, and people were alternately afraid that StL would put all their eggs in one expensive, short-term Matt Holliday basket or something (see vivaelbirdos blog). Mark DeRosa is a better fit for the rest of the season, and it's a pleasant surprise we didn't have to wait until deeper in the summer trading season for this to get done, although the price (promising pitcher Chris Perez and playerTBNL) might have been steep.
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3. Cardinal fans like to embrace almost anybody who's an ex-Cub. It's like the Cold War, and StL is welcoming refugees from a repressive, communist regime who are coming to these shores to find freedom, who've "chosen" our way of life in preference to the cruel insanity that was Stalinism or Maoism. Think of the Gateway Arch as a Statue of Liberty. Make the Boat People feel really welcome and encourage them to assimilate!
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4. This feeling is heightened after seeing beloved longtime Cardinal Jim Edmonds in a Cubs uni last year--and doing well and helping the Cubs way more than expected (after a brief spring stint as a Padre that was not nearly as promising as DeRo's 2009 start with Cleveland). It was just so, so wrong, so seeing a beloved Cub in a Cardinal uni kinda balances out the equation a little.
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July 10-12, baby!

An anniversary but always a sad one because we'll never know how much mor he would have done from that age on. Would he have reached 600 homers? Would he have had more RBI than anyone in history? Would he have gotten 3000 hits? Probably YES to all but we'll unfortunately never know.

Lou was the best.