If there's such a thing as a big week in the National League Central, this is it.
The way I look at it, there are three or four decent teams in the division, or it's a tightly-bunched division of a half-dozen very ordinary teams.
When they play against one another, of course, nobody knows how bad they are. Kind of like Big Ten basketball.
Anyway, first-place St. Louis opens a three-game series at second-place Milwaukee tonight, then the Cardinals and the best baseball player on the planet -- Albert Pujols [pictured at the right] -- come to Chicago for a four-game series that starts Friday.
At the same time the Cardinals are playing at Wrigley Field, the Brewers must play the Los Angeles Dodgers, who happen to be the best team in baseball.
Mark Robinson of Iowa City has several things -- including baseball -- on his mind in this e-mail:
Hi, Ron:
"I put a good 208,000 miles on my 1995 Olds Cutlass before the transmission gave up the ghost three years ago. That was one helluva car, I tell ya. Leather seats and the upgraded sound system along with satellite radio made it a dream machine. I do honor your Toyota.
"Your obsession with the St. Louis Cardinals is part and parcel of Cubs fans who are pissed off at how futile the Cubs' efforts have been in the last 100 years.
"Ron, you may want to go ballistic on the Cardinals and La Tony, but, like your Cubs, the Cardinals are going nowhere this season.
"The St. Louis media loves the Cards? Who knew?
"Do you recall, Ron a year before the Cards won the series that there were planes flying over Busch Stadium asking for LaRussa's head? Save our team, the banners read.
"My take:
"Tony is not the best manager. Duncan is not the best pitching coach. The Cards are a sub-par team.
"The St. Louis-Chicago rivalry is as good as the Boston-Yankees rivalry.
"Albert Pujols will be, in 10 years, considered the best player in the history of baseball."
Mark Robinson
Iowa City
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[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: I spend entirely too much time listening to Al Hrabosky do commentary on the Cardinals' telecasts. What he says has an influence on my thoughts and my writing. The only way around this predicament is to wage a campaign to get Hrabosky fired. He is a sick man, and he makes me sick].
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Chuck Offenburger [pictured at the left], the outstanding columnist from Cooper, IA, read that I took a tentative ride the other day on my $20 no-frills, no-gears cruiser bicycle that I bought from a Target store in mid-December two or three years ago.
Here's what he wrote to me in an e-mail:
"Ron...
"Your readers need a photo of you on your new bicycle. Can you put Maxine to work on that? And we better by God see you wearing a helmet in that photo, too.
"RAGBRAI starts in two weeks. Are you thinking of getting ready and going on it? This year's ride overnights for the first time ever in Indianola, the hometown of Clarence Pickard, who really 'made' RAGBRAI. He was 83 years old when he rode the first ride across Iowa in 1972. When people saw that a fellow of Pickard's age could make it all the way across the state on a bicycle, everybody wanted t try it.
"You're just a pup compared to Pickard's 83 years when he first did it.
"Ride on, brother!"
Chuck Offenburger
Cooper, IA
[Here's what I wrote in an e-mail to Offenburger: "Chuck, thanks for the e-mail regarding bicycling as it pertains to me. After riding various kinds of bikes, dating to when I was 6 or so, I have now resumed straddling a no-frills cruiser that I bought new for $20 in mid-December at a West Des Moines Target store. I let the bike sit in my shed for a couple of years, then decided to have one of my neighbors inflate the tires. I am now in my infancy regarding bicycling again. I thought pedaling a bike would be good for me in addition to the large amount of walking I do. However, I have promised myself I will ride only in parking lots and on sidewalks. No street biking for me. It makes me nervous to hear the engine of a car behind me. I'm too damn old to risk being hit by a 15-year-old kid using his learners' permit to drive. I certainly know the bicycle rider always comes out second-best in one of those confrontations. So no RAGBRAI for this guy. By the way, I still have my 10-speed Raleigh with the skinny tires that I had when I used to bike to the Waveland tennis courts in Des Moines when guys like John Karras, Chuck Reynolds, Knox Craig and Bill Holden [a real name out of the past!] were playing tennis. I'm a bit tempted to buy new tires for the Raleigh and ride it again someday. But, like I said, only in a parking lot on a Sunday afternoon. I'll be keeping up with you pros on RAGBRAI in a few weeks. I hope Carolyn Washburn joins you on the route. Great hearing from you and keep writing great stuff!"]
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They've got some very short memories at the paper.
I mean, there was something in the business pages today that said the af2 league -- I think that's the football league in which the Barnstormrs now play -- might put its offices in Des Moines.
Listen, it seems like only yesterday when the somebody at the paper kept writing that the Arena League -- the real Arena League, that is -- might put its hall of fame, if there is such a thing, into a vacant building in downtown Des Moines.
I think the building in which the hall of fame was supposed to be located is still vacant. Or maybe it's burned to the ground.
So don't waste my time writing about the af2 league headquartering in Des Moines.
