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Friday, June 25, 2010

Sports

Five facts about this weekend's Royals-Cards showdown

Posted by Ben Palosaari on Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 2:00 PM

click to enlarge Our jerky neighbors our coming to visit this weekend.
  • Our jerky neighbors our coming to visit this weekend.

The St. Louis Cardinals are coming to town to once again show us what a big-market contender looks like. It feels kind of like when the rich cousins show up at a family reunion and make everybody else feel inferior. You resent them, but you're mostly jealous of the things they have ... like their new stadium or phenomenal first baseman. It's just like that. After a little poking around and number crunching, here are five intriguing facts about this incarnation of the I-70 series.

1. Albert Pujols is playing for the wrong Missouri team. He is a career .400 hitter at Kauffman with 12 bombs but only .335 hitting at Busch Stadium. Only .335!

2. Zach Greinke's career record against the Cardinals is a respectable 2-2, but his ERA is 5.24.

click to enlarge This man is wearing the wrong uni.
  • This man is wearing the wrong uni.
3. One reason for Greinke's bloated 3.94 ERA this season is that he's been giving up an unusually high number of long balls. He has already surrendered 13 home runs this season. That's two more than his total from all of last year. This bodes well for the Cards, who are ranked tenth in homers this season.

4. The Royals' 24-33 regular season record against the Cardinals is actually pretty good given the gulf between the franchise's overall regular season records in recent years. Strangely, the Royals play better in St. Louis (12-12) than at home (12-21)

5. Game 7 of the 1985 World Series between the Cards and Royals -- which included umpire Don Denkinger's blown call in game six, allowing the Royals to claim the club's first and only World Series title in game seven, and is considered the basis of the clubs' rivalry -- will be commemorated with a poster given to the first 20,000 fans at Sunday's game. Denkinger, of course, has been back in the media spotlight discussing his field of expertise: the terrible call umpire Jim Joyce made costing Detroit's Armando Galarraga a perfect game.

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Compared to KC it is. STL has a Cardinals nation thing going, and its fans sweep across the Ozarks.

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Posted by Suspira on 06/28/2010 at 5:10 PM

I wouldn't consider STL a "big market" team.

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Posted by anonymous on 06/26/2010 at 3:30 PM
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