Chris Carpenter's Soul Patch Beats Reds Again, Cardinals 4-1

For the third time this season, Carpenter beat the Reds. In my pre-series calculations, I thought that they were going to miss him this time around. Looks like I need to go back to calculations school. For the first time this year, in a non-Cubs series, the game was nationally televised on ESPN. And fortunately, apparently for everyone else, there was something else going on in baseball so the announcers didn't have to worry about actually calling the game. They were busy talking with Curt Schilling for some reason. Marty even got up in the booth and was able to mask his intense hatred for the Reds for at least a half inning. "This team, for my money, is the worst baseball team in the history of the game."

But, despite all of the distractions, the Reds didn't look awful on their nationally televised debut, with the exception of being able to not do anything against Carpenter. So, maybe I take that back, they were at least a little bit awful. The offense didn't do much and when they did, they just hit each other with line drives to kill rallies. The example being Bruce's shot that was heading near the first and second base hole when it hit Rolen in the leg. That's the second time in about a week that Rolen has been hit by a ball in play. Wasn't he watching Phillips on his preceding grounder? He just jumped right over the top.

Troy LeCure, who you might remember from such films as the Contrabulous Fabtraption of Horatio Hufnagel, wasn't bad, though, I hate to agree with Sutcliffe, stuck around for one inning two long. After struggling through the 5th, Sam ran back out there for the 6th, loaded the bases and allowed Enerio to unload a portion of them for him. So, his line looks worse then he actually was. Homeboy is supposed to be coming off the DL in time to belittle the coaching staff prior to his next start, so that might be about it for LeCure. Too bad, Sam. At least you got to face the Astros.

Reds get the day off today to think about how much they hate Chris Carpenter and his tiny hat. Then they get to go to Washington to unmercifully beat on the Nationals. In other news, a notable Reds alum was put out to stud yesterday. That's right, as many of you likely saw, Griffy hung up the spikes and his going to start selling his seed to mother's who'd like to have a future major leaguer. That's big business. The Reds Rocket, depending upon laziness, will write a proper tribute at some point, hopefully this evening. But we'll have to see, I am pretty lazy.