it's just something in my eye

I have terrible seasonal allergies (and by seasonal, I mean spring, summer, fall, and winter), so I can totally sympathize with Glaus. I was reading Derrick Goold's latest blog, and I wanted to address a few things. 

Glaus said he has never had allergies before, and he’s wondering if there might be another cause. 

Welcome to MO, Troy. You could be the healthiest person in the known universe, and April in the show-me state would have you coughing and sneezing and cursing the lawnmowers.

La Russa said the watery eyes only bother Glaus at the plate, and that he hasn’t had the trouble anywhere but the plate. 

Not being a baseball player, I can only speculate, but I would say that batting requires a lot more visual concentration than anything else. So he's standing there staring at the pitcher, probably not blinking a lot, not moving his head a lot, and trying very hard to see the ball. Doesn't it make sense then, that a little irritation that didn't bother him any other time might cause him some serious distress at the plate. 

By Monday, he hopes to have a pair of clear glasses — like sunglasses with clear lenses — to wear at the plate. 

We'll see. Just an after-thought, but maybe the lights are only exacerbating the problem. I wonder if actual sunglasses wouldn't help, although they probably wouldn't help him see the ball any, huh?

complete game, baby!

Complete game win for your hero and mine, Adam Wainwright. 127 pitches, 5 hits, 3 runs, 2 walks, 6 strike-outs. He is just SICK. And kudos to Skip for coming through in the clutch with a base hit to score the winning run. 

You'd've thought they'd clinched the division or something they way they were celebrating at the plate. But I wouldn't take any of it away from them. It was a heck of a game and they played hard and fought hard for the win. Any time you beat a great pitcher like Oswalt you deserve some celebration.

Just a word about the "incident" in the third. . . 

First, Wainwright is NOT that pitcher. Maybe Ausmus is used to working with THAT pitcher, and maybe there's a guy or two wearing the same uniform as Adam that wouldn't have a problem with a little retaliation here and there, but there's no way you will ever convince me that throwing behind Ausmus was ANYTHING but a missed location. Hell, it didn't even hit him. . . 

Second, can you say o v e r r e a c t i o n ? 

If Ausmus HAD been involved in a game where his pitcher hit the batter, and then he himself felt the breeze of a pitch as it passed behind him in the next inning, and this pitcher from some other team had possibly done it with the slightest of intention, well, then Ausmus should have been a man and taken the next pitch out of the park instead of acting like a baby and crying about it. 

Really? You want to throw down? Bring it, little girl. 

Troy Glaus has discovered what those of us from Missour-ah already knew, namely that spring in the midwest (particularly St. Louis), while beautiful, has two very ugly side-effects: road construction and nasal allergies. I don't know what to tell you about the driving delays, but a dose of Claritin in the morning does wonders for itchy eyes and a runny nose.