StLouis6

There comes that time in most baseball seasons when the disappointment sinks in. It’s especially tough when a team make the playoffs then fails. The Cards were eliminated 20 days ago—it seems like months.

The Cardinals scored one run, but blew a good chance to score a lot more in the top of the first inning. When the Dodgers came back and scored two in their half of the first, the complexion of the game changed.

Chris Carpenter battled, but he didn’t have his good stuff tonight.

Quite simply, the Cards still are not hitting when it counts.

The game set a MLB postseason record for combined men left on base with 30. Clearly, there were runs to be had. The Cardinals just didn’t get them home.

Los Angeles 5, St. Louis 3. The Dodgers lead the series 1-0.

Game 2, 5 p.m. Central time today (Thursday, Oct. 8) on TBS.

We have just signed a sponsorship for the Baseball-Reference.com page of Hal Smith, a Barling, Ark., native who played six years (1955-60) with the St. Louis Cardinals and was a three-time All-Star.

Mr. Smith, now 78, will appear at the Butler Center’s Legacies & Lunch program today (Oct. 7) at noon in the Darragh Room at the Central Arkansas Library System’s Main Library on Rock Street in downtown Little Rock. Appearing with him will be Billy D. Higgins, author of “The Barling Darling: Hal Smith in American Baseball.”

The program is free, but participants are asked to bring their own sack lunch.

We went to a performance of “Always … Patsy Cline” at Arkansas Repertory Theater in Little Rock on Saturday.

Jessica Welch, who played Patsy, has an amazing range and a wonderful voice. Every song was a winner. The band, “the Bodocious Bobcats,” also was excellent. The actor who played Louise, the woman who befriended Cline in Houston before her 1962 death in a plane crash, also was good, but I am forgetting her name at the moment.

It was the best show I’ve seen in a while two performances remain (on Sunday).

Another win slipped through the Cardinals’ fingers Saturday afternoon against the Milwaukee Brewers.

The good news, I guess, is that the Dodgers and Phillies also have been twiddling their thumbs while supposedly preparing for the MLB playoffs.

Only the Rockies, officially the National League wild-card representative, as of Saturday night’s loss at Dodger Stadium, could be accused of getting hot at the right time.

So the National League first-round slate is set with Los Angeles hosting St. Louis and Philadelphia opening at home against Colorado. The American League will have New York hosting either Detroit or Minnesota and the Los Angeles Angels hosting the wild card, Boston.

This is a great time of the year.

Chris Carpenter decided that turning in another near-perfect pitching performance might not be enough, so he hit a grand slam and drove in two more runs with a double to propel the St, Louis Cardinals to a 13-0 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. It snapped a three-game losing streak the Redbirds had suffered through since clinching the NL Central Division by defeating the Colorado Rockies on Saturday night.

What’s amazing is that the 6-RBI effort sets a Cardinals team record for a pitcher in a single game. It was Carpenter’s first major-league home run.

Inspired by another Cardinals fan, I am signing up for tumblr because I just don’t have enough to do.