Wild Fraud

Let's face it. Tonight was a really fun night for baseball. This is exactly what Bud Selig was hoping for when he chose to sign off on the whole second wild card thing. Oakland clinched a playoff berth and all of a sudden has a shot at the best record in the AL. That also means Year One of the Albert Pujols Era is officially over in Los Angeles. (Yep, I said it.) And I feel comfortable saying what I am about to say now that the Cardinals can do no worse than a tiebreaking game against the Dodgers with a win over the Reds tonight, and can avoid the tiebreaker altogether with any win or Dodger loss in the next two days.

I hate the second wild card. I hate it so much I'm not even going to bother capitalizing it. I'm not one of those purists who thinks the first wild card was terrible for the game. I'm not against more teams having a chance to make the playoffs. But what is happening here is that more teams have the opportunity to have their entire seasons pulled out from under them over the span of 9 short innings after laboring for six months nearly every day to reach where they've reached. Make it a series, or it's not the playoffs. When the playoffs really start, I hope it's the Cardinals that are in it. And I will certainly watch that play-in game, should they reach it. But if it meant correcting what is now a horribly unfair practice for four teams every year that was suddenly thrust upon this great game, I would certainly trade a Cardinals playoff berth for making things right again.

Tonight's cards come courtesy to you from The Angels, In Order, which has nothing at all to do with how much I dislike Bud Selig. I saw a post over there recently that included some nice juicy Cardinals Chrome refractors and I thought I'd see if I could get my paws on them. Matt Adams got some important playing time earlier this season but was surprisingly not among the September callups. With Allen Craig and Matt Carpenter playing well, however, there wasn't going to be a lot of opportunities for him to swing the bat.

I haven't weighed in on Triple Play yet. I think they're dorky and I am not really looking to collect them. That said, they're not going to get kicked out of my Cardinals binders. Erin picked up a few packs over the weekend and definitely does like them, so I'm sure I haven't seen the last of this set around the house. They're fun, but in a very strange way that I can't really put my finger on.