We Came, We Laughed, We Cried, We Cried Harder

Well folks, there you have it. I really thought that this current losing skid had to stop at some point and that maybe somewhere along the way I'd have something inspiring to say about keeping our chins up, soldiering on, staying the course and maybe, oh I don't know, not SUCKING anymore. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened yet and I could no longer in good faith continue to ignore the stretch and the glaring possibility that it may not end.

In the wake of the whole Rick Ankiel/HGH scandal, the St. Louis Cardinals have lost seven straight games, while previously unstoppable Ankiel has gone an embarrassingly anemic 1 for 23. The Birds have slumped to five games out of first place. And that dazzling rise above .500? Yeah, much like the season, that's history as well as we've sunken to six games under.

So my question here is, WHAT THE @#$! happened? (Obviously aside from the starting rotation returning to shiteous form. Christ. What's wrong with these guys?) I mean, I'm not a total idiot. I had no grand illusions that we wouldn't eventually face plant and knock ourselves into obscurity. The big race to see who isn't the biggest loser in the NL Central is and has been a joke all along. Had we won that illustrious prize it would have proved nothing except that, hey, even ridiculously crappy teams can go to the playoffs! Even through our hot streak in August it at no point really seemed like we were a well conditioned machine clicking along efficiently at a calm, controlled and steady pace. No, it seemed much more like a drunk guy at a shooting range. The bullets were squeezing out quickly, furiously and erratically, yet inexplicably they were hitting the target more often then not. There was no logic or skill to it. We are not and have not been a good baseball team all season. Still, it's disappointing to go out like this, just as I predicted we would, in the shadow of the Ankiel allegations. It really was the final straw for a beaten and battered Cardinal Nation. Players, management and fans alike pretty well threw up their hands and said, "screw it, this ain't worth it. We suck, man." I'd hoped I was wrong and that the media storm wouldn't get inside Ankiel's fragile psyche. Obviously, one thing he's not developed in his incredible comeback is thick skin. Hell, he's so sensitive to criticism I swear that one "your mama's so fat" joke and this guy'd be curled up in the dugout sucking his thumb. I realize I have a tendency towards the dramatic, but I think that in this case it's warranted. I really don't envision us rebounding from this. In fact, at this point I'm not even sure I want us to. I've had enough heartache this summer (mixed, I suppose, with just enough pleasure to keep me from weeping openly,) that I'm almost happy to pack it in for the year. Who knows, though. Maybe it's all just a giant coincidence. Maybe we're just going through another slump and it has nothing to do with Ankiel. Maybe we've still got a late season spark left in us that'll at the very least allow us to go out on a high note. But somehow I doubt it.

So in that spirit, GO MILWAUKEE!! I mean, someone's got to win this division, right?

Et Tu, Ankiel?

I got up this morning in a pretty damn good mood. Despite some recent setbacks, the Cardinals have still managed to fight and claw their way within one game of the tied-for-first-place Brewers and Cubs. When I went to bed last night, Carlos Zambrano had been exposed as a universal jackoff, Ryan Dempster had blown a crucial save against the Dodgers and Rick Ankiel had smoked two homeruns for 7 RBI's to lead the Cardinals to a 16-4 beatdown of the Pirates. Everything was peaceful and right with the world.

Then I woke up this morning to the New York Daily News article. I am unequivocally and painfully STUNNED. Coming the morning after what was arguably his greatest game to date, it has been revealed that the St. Louis Cardinals' comeback kid has been implicated in the use of performance enhancing drug HGH. Talk about BUZZ KILL. I feel like I just got punched in the stomach. Even without knowing the validity or relevance of the accusations, I can't help but be supremely disappointed. The proverbial bubble has been burst, the illusion of innocence shattered. If the allegations are true, it doesn't matter if he stopped taking the drugs before the 2005 ban went into place. It still changes everything because his unbelievable story is going to be permanently viewed with suspicion anyway. There are a lot of people talking about the development this morning, all of them more articulately then me. See here, here and here.

My personal take? Siiiiigh. I don't know. I'm not sure I'm over the initial shock and horror of it all just yet. In a season plagued by ugliness, from Tony LaRussa's DUI, to Josh Hancock's death, to the serious injuries eliminating Chris Carpenter, Josh Kinney, Preston Wilson and Scott Rolen, to less serious injuries sustained over the course of the year by Yadier Molina, David Eckstein, Jim Edmonds and Mike Maroth, to Scott Spiezio's undisclosed substance abuse problem, to Juan Encarnacion's potential career ending eye injury and then finally to just a general rash of bad pitching, weak hitting and sloppy play, THIS is the real heartbreaker. It is especially and arguably the MOST devastating, because it has been DESPITE these other things that the team has rallied around Ankiel's triumphant return and played well enough and hard enough to muscle themselves back into the pennant race. To find out his astounding return to MLB success was at any point aided by the use of illegal drugs completely takes the magic out of things and makes it seem less like a Disney-ready movie and more like another inevitable fall from grace that is all too common now among professional athletes. Obviously, I'm hoping his use was only temporary and extended only so far as that years worth prescribed to him in 2004. I'm hoping that the feats he's accomplished this year are unblemished by performance enhancers and that his brush with the underbelly of professional sports lasted only so long as his recovery from Tommy John surgery. I'm hoping that once the ban was placed in 2005 that he walked away and has been clean ever since. Yet what if all of that is true? What if he truly hasn't used HGH since then and has achieved his current degree of success due only to hard work and perseverance? Do the allegations then make "The Natural" any less of a phenomenon? In theory, no, of course not. However, in the court of public opinion people are always going to wonder and the more cynical are always going to assume his guilt. Unfortunately, Ankiel has no real way of proving it one way or another and he'll probably always bear the scarlet letter that so many contemporary and historical greats are saddled with. It was the perceived pureness of his improbable and unlikely story that made baseball fans believe that miracles can happen and underdogs can succeed. He was a wholesome reminder that goodness can and does occasionally prevail in major league baseball. I fear that no matter how this all pans out, his accomplishments will forever be linked to this alleged dark spot in his history. That makes me unbearably sad.

It would make me feel a lot better to hear Rick Ankiel himself publicly address and clarify the claims. Cardinal fans, hell baseball fans in general, need to hear what he has to say. After all, Ankiel's story doesn't just pertain to St. Louis fans anymore. We ALL deserve to hear his side of the story and frankly, he deserves to tell it. As we head into a pivotal series against the Diamondbacks and Brandon Webb tonight, the last thing the Cardinals need is another gutwrenching setback to shift the focus. These guys are obviously scrappy, but one has to wonder how much more they can possibly take. Make me a believer again, Rick!