On a gorgeous Monday afternoon in St. Louis, the Houston Astros strode into Busch Stadium to take on the Cardinals in their home opener. Amidst a record crowd, Adam Wainwright sat down the Astros in a tidy 2 hours and 24 minutes. Albert Pujols homered (again) and Ryan Ludwick had four hits. Of course, against the hapless Astros, this is hardly a surprise. Nevertheless, the biggest story of the day took place before the game during introductions, when a crowd approaching 50,000 fans gave a standing ovation to former Cardinal great and current hitting coach Mark McGwire.

Writers theorized about how McGwire finally earned forgiveness for his past PED trangressions — a forgiveness undoubtedly made easier on the conscience of so many Cardinal fans who are aware of the team’s prolific 2010 offense (five runs per game). I couldn’t agree less.

I see the “message” as not being meant for McGwire at all, but rather a statement to the whining pontificators bemoaning an entire era in baseball history. The fans realize that the same blowhards that have been condemning McGwire since St. Patty’s Day 2005 were also the ones using column space to write love letters to him and Sammy Sosa in 1998 — and they are sick of it.  Fans have grieved over players like McGwire, but they’ve moved on.   For those members of the media and ex-players who are still calling for erased record books, it is time to do the same (as a side note, broadcaster and former deadbeat Jack Clark, who called McGwire a “phony,” was summarily booed by the home crowd).

Mark McGwire's record-breaking 1998 season was the epitome of late 1990's-early 2000's culture. By 2005, those days were long gone and McGwire was in exile.

Since Ken Caminiti came clean in 2002, baseball hasn’t been the same. Defense, fielding and walks are in. Homeruns are out. There aren’t a lot of guys walking around that look like McGwire, Sosa or Barry Bonds. Which all and all, is probably a good thing. You can argue that it’s more exciting to see a guy like Nick Johnson grind his way to a .400 on-base percentage rather than a 50 HR season from Brady Anderson, but either way, you’re not looking at the same product anymore. The economics of this game, hell, of this country, dictated a new type of dynamic that has broken down the long-standing beliefs that were accepted as undeniable baseball insider fact. The old tale that a veteran’s grit is worth more than an equally-talented 20 year-old earning the league minimum is an extinct ideology. The war against Sabermetrics is over, and as much as Joe Morgan hates to admit it, the old guard lost. The fact that Zach Greinke and Tim Lincecum won a combined 31 games last year and still captured their respective league’s Cy Young awards proves that the revolution is here. Think I’m wrong? Check out the last night’s box score.

So while baseball may not be better than it was in 1998 or 2001, it’s not worse. And the game has survived. Revenues are up and so is attendance. Blame Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds all you want, but nothing they ingested during their careers is going to knock the luster off of the emergence of new superstars like Evan Longoria or Justin Upton. It’s time for the writers to move on. For those who love the sport, it’s time to put the dream-like period of baseball history that has become known as the “Steroid Era” into perspective: what an incredible (yet tainted) era of baseball. There is no reason we should turn our backs on it, or the icons who made box-score watching fun again.

Speaking of box-scores: the last time St. Louis had a shutout during a home opener was 1998 when they beat the Dodgers 6-0. Guess who led the way? McGwire, who hit a grand slam.

Just look how nice that ballpark looks. The new Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins, looks exactly like what a new and modern baseball stadium should look like. If you don’t believe me, check out the photos from their opening day, the Twins won 5-2 over the Red Sox.  It is, by all accounts, a gorgeous park.  I only wish I had a brand new park to go to that fits so nicely into the cityscape and looks gorgeous on the outside and inside but sadly, I live in Washington DC and the team I follow is the Washington Nationals.

See, the Washington Nationals did just get a brand new baseball stadium, it opened up in 2008, was paid for by the District of Columbia and essentially handed over to the Nationals after being built.  Not taking into consideration how the stadium was built, you’d think I, the baseball fan, would be grateful for not having to watch any more baseball games at RFK Stadium anymore.  You might think that, but strangely enough, while watching games at Nationals Park is a newer and cleaner experience it isn’t necessarily better.  Nationals Park is yet another example of the Washington Nationals franchise missing a chance to have something special and settling for being mediocre.

The best thing I can say about this stadium is that it is new and therefore, relatively clean.  Also, it does have one gorgeous and gigantic big screen tv in the outfield…that doesn’t always work right.  That is about it.  Those 2 things.  Clean stadium, big TV.  Everything else about the park is extremely non-descript, except for the ill-conceived “motion” statues they have in the main entryway to the park.

Does that look like a good idea to you?  Walter Johnson has like 5 arms there.  Kinda weird.  Pretty awful art in my mind.

I understood the want to get away from the red bricked baseball stadiums that had been built before.  I understood the want to have a color scheme to “fit into Washington”…i just don’t think that making the stadium look like HUD was the right call.  Also, doing away with limestone for concrete was a great budget call…but it looks like it.  Its cheap and ugly.  I can go on like this for hours really, but for word count’s sake, i’ll cut it short here by saying, the building was built cutting corners and it shows.

Now, this doesn’t mean I am not going to stop going to the park, its not a horrible experience by any means…just a very bland one.  Its yet another opportunity missed by the Washington Nationals.  A constant reminder of a million ways that the team could’ve tried harder to not take for granted the many baseball starved fans of this city and do something special for them.  Sure you can say “but Chimp, DC built the Stadium, not the Nationals, blame them!” but to that I say, nothing was stopping the Nationals owners from chipping in some cash to make the stadium a magical place.  They didn’t and they got a building built by the government and it looks like a government building. Instead of a shrine to baseball, Nationals Park has all the charm of  a convention center.

I’ll still go to the games, but i’m not going to lie and say that it is going to be a beautiful day at the park.  It’l just be ok…and man am I jealous of what they have up there in Minnesota.

You truly can make a movie about anything and if there was ever a “sport” that deserved a mocumentary I really thought that cornhole would be pretty close to the bottom of the list.  In my mind, a cornhole movie would have to be somewhere after one about Beer Pong tournaments and somewhere before one about tournament marbles.  Nevertheless, here we are, its been done…even if it is only in limited release right now.  How limited?  One night only in Covington, Kentucky.  Ouch!  Anyway, if you have fond memories from college about playing cornhole then it might be worth your time to support the indie filmmakers.  Check out the clip and see it for yourself:

Sadly for those filmmakers, I don’t have those memories.  No, I went to an east coast school that strictly had beer pong, caps, flip cup and various card games for our drinking entertainment so the most I will do for these guys is post this clip and wish them luck.

Via Cornhole The Movie website

Some wisenheimer NHL fan had a nice idea to mashup the new Stanley Cup Playoffs ads with Evander Kane’s knockout of hated goon Matt Cooke from the other night.  Watch it, its worth your time, even if you didn’t see the punch, which you should because its about time that Cooke got what was coming to him.  If you don’t watch hockey and/or you don’t know who either Matt Cooke or Evander Kane are, well, one is a huge bag of douche and the other is now my hero.  Bravo Kane, bravo.

Photo taken from Deadspin and by Fred Johnson, seriously nice photo dude.

I’m not a golfer, being the lazy blogger that I am that whole swinging of a golf club was way too much work to put myself through.  A good way to ruin a nice walk, am I right?  Am I Right?? Hah, heh, well, there’s a way around that whole, swinging a club thing that might have been preventing you from taking up the sport of golf…may we present to you…THE SWINGLESS GOLF CLUB.

Yikes.  Equally as dumb as it is cool to watch, eh?  I mean, the next thing is to just do away with the club and just shoot the balls down the course with a ball bazooka or something.  No idea what the practical purpose of this would be unless you were handicapped, and even then, you’re kinda defeating the purpose of golf if you aren’t swinging the club.  The only good thing about this is that I might finally be able to get a score as good as I can do in the Tiger game on the Wii.    That motion plus thing makes that stuff SO REAL.