Painful

As nasty as the Reds/Cardinals rivalry has become recently, there's still truly nothing more satisfying to me in a regular season than a win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field. There was a blown call that cost the Cards at least one run and some incredibly dicey pitching by Chris Carpenter, but all in all the bats came through as they have many times this season and victory was achieved.

However, the news about Tony La Russa overshadowed the evening. After what was initially announced as a serious case of pinkeye never really seemed to go away, we discovered today that La Russa may actually have a more serious affliction called herpes zoster - better known as "shingles". No pinkeye that I've ever heard of can literally turn your face into something that looks like Sloth from the Goonies, so I had to figure that we didn't know the full story. Shingles is initially caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox, which never really leaves the body (creepy) and sounds very very painful.

La Russa has always struck me as the mean uncle that no one seems to get along with, yet is very wise and everyone seems to have some grudging respect for, deep down. I hope that there's a speedy recovery for him now that he's finally getting some treatment. He's the rare sort that seems to be largely disliked by opponents and many of his own team's fans, yet has been very successful in his career and is a no doubt Hall of Famer no matter what you think of him. I yell about and get annoyed with him as much as the next guy, but if I agreed with everything the manager did I wouldn't be a sports fan. It's also frustrating that in 16 (!) years of managing the Cardinals, he has relatively few baseball cards. I guess that happened to Bobby Cox, too.