I thought I'd make my first Emeritus post — New York magazine is fun! I'm totally learning about Fashion Week and sushi restaurants! — about Rick, and the Cardinals, and those ridiculous Cubs-Brewers trades because, honestly, if I'd had my druthers, I'd have written every post about the Cardinals when I was editor of this here site. (It was difficult not to. Extremely so.) So while I have a few moments before I have to approve the new Vincent Gallo photo spread, I thought I'd scratch the itch.

I know, I know: Billy Beane's the genius, we all know it, we all love him, he loves the Ramones, whatta guy. But I cannot fathom what he's thinking with the Rich Harden trade. We understand that Harden is probably going to get hurt — it's nice to see the Cubs have Mark Prior back — and then everyone will give him backslaps and man hugs, no homo. But Jim Hendry can claim all he wants that the trade wasn't a reaction to the Sabathia trade — which seems much more fair, and didn't actually upset us nearly as much — and we're still not going to believe him. That's really all Beane could get for Harden? Sean Gallagher? I'd rather have Black Gallagher.

Sure, Harden is probably gonna break down. But that doesn't make Eric Patterson a better second baseman.

More to the point, both the Cubs and the Brewers have made moves that the Cardinals shouldn't — and probably can't — counter. In a way, the fact that the two teams had to make the trades at all is a victory; if the Cardinals aren't dramatically overachieving in the first place, maybe everybody feels a little more comfortable with where they stand and don't make the risk trades. This was never supposed to be a contending season for the Cardinals; it's a house money season. If they keep this going, wow, what a great story. If they don't, well, it has been more fun that anyone thought it would be, now trade Ludwick for a prospect or two. It's clear the Cardinals aren't as talented as the Cubs or Brewers, and that was true before those two trades. But hey, why not let it ride? It's bizarre that the Birds have even made it this far.

But yes: The MLB Extra Innings package continues to break my heart. Anytime they have the road announcers, they always bring up the Ankiel pitching thing. Al Hrabosky and Dan McLaughlin, the Cardinals announcers, never even refer to Ankiel as a pitcher; they know how much it hurts Cardinals fans to even think about it. But every time Ankiel bats and we have the road announcers ... "what a story, this kid, with the pitching and the ..." The mute button is smashed immediately. Honestly, that video above, that's Faces Of Death for Cardinals fans; it should be on rotten.com.

The Big Merkin responded by throwing two scoreless innings with four strikeouts, before giving way to Jack Taschner for one inning and then Lincecum, who pitched four innings, giving up a run and striking out four to get the win (sitting through an hour rain delay in the process). Lincecum even got a single — and was later driven in by Randy Winn — and is hitting 1.000. I was criticized for not mentioning Lincecum in the Giants preview, and with good reason; according to readers he leaves his home each morning by rolling a giant rock from the entrance. He was brought here to give his life for us, and take upon himself our sins. Hallelujah, the Giants win! Coincidentally, Jesus himself was also 1-2 after his first three games.

Hmmm, Merkin. I've just had an idea for as fantastic new Giants costumed mascot!

• O Brother, Where Art Thou? Mets fans will be shocked to learn that Pedro Martinez is on the disabled list — who had April 2 in the pool? — due to a pulled hamstring. He'll be out 4-6 weeks. New York shrugged at the news and beat the Marlins 13-0, collecting 17 hits, with three doubles by Carlos Beltran. That's 3.3 innings pitched for Pedro this season, folks, to go along with his combined totals for 2006 and '07 of 160 IP and a 12-9 record.

• It's Good To Be Back In The US Of A. Jon Lester threw a three-hitter over 6 2/3 and David Ortiz had a two-run homer as the Boston Ham Fighters defeated the Oakland Toyo Carp 5-0. This is how Boston is bringing in its relief pitchers from the bullpen this season, by the way.

• A-Rod Homers Yet Yankees Lose? What? A.J. Burnett, who very well could be a Cylon, was in command through six innings in the Blue Jays' 5-2 win over the Yankees. Burnett was chased by Alex Rodriguez's totally non-steroid-related two-run homer in the seventh, and Vernon Wells had a two-run homer off Mike Mussina.

• Zim Went The Strings Of My Heart. If you think the Giants are having trouble at the plate this season (and they are), take a look at the Phillies. The Nationals used three pitchers to earn a one-hitter, beating Philadelphia 1-0. The winning hit? You guessed it: A Ryan Zimmerman homer. You get a cookie. Tim Redding took a one-hitter into the eighth for the Ws.

• Who is This Ankiel You Speak Of? Rick Ankiel — with whom you may not be familiar — is doing a pretty decent job of replacing Jim Edmonds in center field for the Cardinals, evidently.

• This Just In ... Putz Placed On 15-Day Disabled List.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch asked that question this morning, and it's key, because the Cardinals are counting on him this year. The thing about great stories — and regardless your view on Ankiel and HGH and whatever, last year was a great story — is that inevitably they have to keep going. The flash is over; now he has to be a regular player. And protect Albert Pujols in the lineup. Is he really ready for that?

We Cardinals fans are far from certain this tale is over, and we've been through too much not to be a little wary. If Ankiel starts off slowly, we are all going to fret. Is he going to lose it again? Is he ready for all this again? Forgive us: We still think of Ankiel as this troubled but good-hearted nephew we root for in more ways than just on-the-field. It will almost seem strange to see him as just another player, another outfielder, a guy on our fantasy team. We want him to do well for our team, but mostly, still, we just want him to do well for himself. We have 162 more games to find out, very soon.

Ankiel Ready To Provide Protection? [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

Yes, Rick Ankiel will be back, with the HGH revelations behind him, ready to inspire and elevate America. (He's sports' Barack Obama!) So, how we gonna kick this off? Oh ... it appears ... an arbitration hearing with Scott Boras. Ugh.

"You have a player whose contributions came first as a pitcher, then as a position player," the agent said. "The last player you're really talking about is Babe Ruth."

Man, everything just gets ruined. Stupid sports.

Cards Have Arbitration Coming Up [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

This is a personal one, so forgive us, but here's where Sen. Mitchell came down on Rick Ankiel.

All we know is that we're in love with them both.

No. 6 Seed Sean Salisbury
Displayed his photographic skills.
Accidentally said "Jew."
Met The Balls.
Established a Web presence.

No. 11 Seed Rick Ankiel
Returned.
Amazed.
Inspired.
Absolutely nothing else happened whatsoever, nope.

So, vote, kids.

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Since that whole Rick Ankiel business, the Cardinals are 0-4, Ankiel is 1-for-14 and all appears lost. They have four games with the Cubs this weekend that seem destined to end in a Cubs sweep — unless they can talk Ankiel into pitching! — and then we'll be able to all move on with our lives. Currently there are five teams who have been eliminated from their division races: Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Florida and the Chicago White Sox. They have found peace. We'll find it pretty soon, we suspect, and only then, as Cardinals fans, will we be able to truly survey the wreckage of this season. But hey: We've got Scott Rolen for three more years.

Is This How It Ends For Ankiel And The Cardinals? [UmpBump]

Clearly, if the story is true, and this was a one-time (legal, and prescribed) thing for Ankiel, it would certainly behoove him to jump out and say so, immediately. (Jeff Gordon of the Post-Dispatch has a simple remedy for Ankiel to try to put this behind him as fast as possible.) So why's everybody being so quiet? Where's the press conference? Where's the official team statement on the Cardinals' Web site? Where the hell's Scott Boras anyway?

The team says it won't comment until tonight when both Jocketty and Ankiel are scheduled to hold a pregame press conference. That seems like an awfully long time to be silent.

As for us, we might take a little weekend off from baseball; this whole day has just been exhausting, and we might need to sit a few plays out. If only there were something else on television this weekend ...

What We Lost, And What We Never Had [Deadspin]
Another Day, Another Messy Twist To Cards' Chaotic Season [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

It's worth noting — if you'll allow us, as a commenter amusingly put it this morning, to get our Tony Snow on for a moment — that this isn't a case of a guy taking a bunch of HGH, becoming a superhuman and pounding a ton of home runs. In 2004, Rick Ankiel was still a pitcher, recovering from Tommy John surgery and rehabbing in Memphis. (We remind, as Slate pointed out, HGH is hardly a "performance enhancer;" as they put it, steroids are like doing heroin, while HGH is more like smoking weed.) He was a guy who had gone through so much, so much, and was just trying to make it back to a semblance of what he once was, using a substance that was not banned by baseball at the time. As anyone who saw Ankiel at that time knows, the Ankiel of 2004 has no connection to the Ankiel of 2007; that's why his story has been so great, so transforming. Rick Ankiel is not hitting a ton of home runs now because he took HGH in 2004.

But yeah: Do we put that much detail into that paragraph if this is Alex Rodriguez receiving HGH, or Derrek Lee? Probably not.

Our fellow Cardinals fans will go through similar dissembling over the next few weeks — because this isn't going away; Ankiel is going to be remembered for this much longer than Rodney Harrison ever will — and, as Bernie Miklasz pointed out this morning, certain people will defend Ankiel no matter what, and others will think of him as a juicer until the end of time, and the truth will remain somewhere in the middle. (We certainly aren't going to stop wearing his jersey or anything.) And that, friends, is what this story is really about: It's not about HGH, it's not about the Cardinals, it's not even about Rick Ankiel. Fourteen hours ago, Rick Ankiel was what we loved about sports: His story existed in the black-white world we demand of our sports. His story was pure; it was impossible not to be happy for him.

But as much as we try to make it not so — and boy, do we try — the sports world is gray. Ankiel is not a monster or The Bad Guy now that we know he accepted HGH in 2004. But he's not the Guy In The White Hat Here To Save Our Games we all believed — needed to believe— he was either. His story is a human one. His story is gray. It always was.

That we now realize this, so vividly, is what we truly lost, at 8 a.m. this morning, picking up our newspaper as we stepped onto the subway, the world entirely different than it had been 10 minutes before, yet, of course, exactly the same.

As we watch Ankiel today — who has two homers and seven RBIs in the sixth inning of the Cardinals' ongoing blowout of the Pirates — we are afraid we simply cannot resist. Cardinals fans will smile when they note that Ankiel now has more homers than J.D. Drew.

We're still blown away by this. We probably always will be. More tomorrow, surely.

And this isn't the DU!AN post, by the way, so you won't have to look at that photo all night.

• BOOM BITCH! In what can only be described as a heroic effort to restore the value of my baseball card collection, Rick Ankiel lifted Leitch's Buzzsaw Cardinals past the Reds. A few facts are becoming readily apparent; Ankiel is the coolest motherfucker in baseball not named Dmitri and the Reds truly enjoy torturing their afflicted fans. I can't say I don't enjoy it, only evil people like Communists and Manchester fans would call themselves Reds.

• Gallardo Goes...Yardo (Scott Van Pelt I am not) Yovani Gallardo is not the next Ryan Braun, but he is going to be one hell of a pitcher. The heralded rookie pitcher hit the second home run in his last three outings while shutting down the Pirates formidable rather shitty offense. Milwaukee's 3-2 victory coupled with the Cubs predictable loss means just one thing, they're both incredibly mediocre!

Not for long, as the guy above shows: By Friday's game, people were writing Ankiel's name on the back of their shirts, and by Sunday, we actually saw our first legitimate "ANKIEL 24" jersey. We are glad the gift is being shared with the world ... but this kind of intense media attention is kind of what started this whole mess in the first place.

That said, we can't help but contribute to the problem. By pure happenstance, our yearly visit to Busch Stadium coincided with Ankiel's first games as a Cardinals outfielder. After the jump, a mostly incomplete and fuzzy report of our trip, specifically Saturday's game, in which Ankiel hit two homers and a middle-aged woman nearly stuck her finger in our anus.

This is the second season for the new Busch Stadium, and we're now getting used to it enough to stop calling it "the new Busch." But for all the supposed downtown revitalization it was expected to inspire, downtown St. Louis remains a dump. There's some alleged "ballpark village" that's going in next door, but they haven't made an inch of progress on it since we were last back in October for the World Series. The highways are too bunched together, the stadium is surrounded by gravel and dust and you're perpetually one wrong turn away from fisticuffs. St. Louis could have a gorgeous downtown. Why doesn't it?

Inside, though, the crowd was awash in Ankiel madness. Much to our relief, the majority of Cardinals fans were fully aware of Ankiel's history and didn't just think he was some rookie who came out of nowhere. Also: The ladies and those with alternative lifestyles love him. We informed some young woman that Ankiel was married, and she nearly punched us. See? Our man crush isn't that severe.

It's difficult to overstate how surreal it is to see "ANKIEL RF" in the lineup and on the scoreboard. We have seen every game Ankiel has played in the outfield so far, and we still aren't used to it.

A friend pointed out that now-injured Cardinals second baseman looks like Bill Simmons. We agree, and note that, the way Kennedy has been hitting this season, it's clear they both know an equal amount about the National League.

Anyway, you saw what happened: Ankiel homered twice, and we're really not gonna say much more about it. We did not have an erection — thank you very much — but yeah: Good day. We're not gonna go into too much more detail about it, because we kind of want you to still like us.

After the game, we headed to Paddy-O's, which is St. Louis' cute equivalent of a Wrigley Field bar. Cardinals broadcasters Al Hrabosky, Mike Shannon and Joe Buck all have similar establishments, but Paddy-O's is the most successful, because if you stand close enough to the DJ stand, he pours shots in your mouth. This is not to be underestimated. Also: This is a bar that's much more likely to play "Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy" than "Ayo Technology." Obviously.

You might think this guy is another one of those idiots who puts his own name on the back of his jersey, but you'd be mistaken: He's actually honoring Baldus de Ubaldis, an Italian jurist who was, in fact, a cardinal. He also invented the notion of turning your baseball cap backwards in order to look more dope.

See, now here's a definitive problem with having your bachelorette party at Paddy-O's after a Cardinals game: Some asshole's gonna take a picture of you dancing with your "Blowjob Bib" and put it on the Internets. You'd think that if she'd go through all this trouble, she'd find somewhere to put her purse.

Fortunately, we found our fun in less conventional places. Namely, with this group of oppressively drunk middle-aged women, one of whom came to us, seeing our Ankiel jersey, and pinched our ass. They offered our father and us a few beers, and we asked what the special occasion was. (They were, after all, dressed up like cheerleaders.) "Whaddya mean? It's Saturday. It's the Cardinals! IT'S THE CARDINALS!" They then hugged each other and, defying the laws of physics, jumped up and down and started a cheer.

Our father suggested we take a picture. They obliged. The woman to our left appears to be trying to grab our package with a lunch box, and the woman on our right literally tried to stick her finger down the back of our jeans. We kept it together for the picture. It was, after all, Saturday, and it was the Cardinals.

As an added bonus, Yahoo! Sports' Ankiel player page includes two career stats: batting and fielding. The only two things he's ever done. Ever.

• We Rip Soccer For These Kindsa Scores. For a ground ball pitcher, Brandon Webb sure struck out a lot of batters last night (10). Then again, when the opposing team is the Washington Nationals, sometimes a ground ball is asking too much. Webb's 1-0 complete game, 5-hit shutout gave the Arizona Diamondbacks their fourth win in a row.

• Throwaway Inverted Comedy Pyramid. Sort of a rather harsh lede by the Associated Press in the story about the New York Yankees' 10-2 win over the Indians: "Alex Rodriguez took a couple more swings up to No. 503. Mike Mussina saved mementos from No. 100. The Cleveland Indians? They got their usual two and stopped right there." That's completely misleading. The night before, the Indians only scored one run.

• Tilde Force. The last time Magglio Ordoñez had a home run against the Oakland A's at Comerica Park, it vaulted the Detroit Tigers to the World Series. This time, "The Big Tilde" (© Tuffy LLC, 2007) just helped the Tigers win a single game, 5-2. Plus, the Tigers bullpen evidently got all the suck out of their system as they bailed out Justin Verlander with three perfect innings.

• Some Phenom. Tim Lincecum was on the wrong mound at the wrong time as the Pittsburgh Pirates piled up six runs on the young'un in a 13-3 win over the San Francisco Giants. As a team, Pittsburgh still struck out 11 times. (Standard operating procedure.) Barry Bonds didn't play, which typically warrants its own story on SportsCenter. So with that sentiment, coupled with the sudden craze in "miniature athletes" (Penny Hardaway, Pacman Jones), I give you Lil' Barry, sent in by a reader who attended the Giants-Nationals series last week:

We were scheduled to fly out of LaGuardia Airport to St. Louis about 2:45 yesterday, and once we learned Rick was coming, we called our friends we were staying with and decided to go to the game. We were scheduled to land at 4:30 Central Time. Plenty of time. Unfortunately, thanks to the freaking tornado that landed in Brooklyn late Tuesday night, all the flights were delayed, and we sat on the LGA tarmac for two hours, sitting next to a 94-year-old woman who called us "a handsome boy."

We landed at Lambert right before first pitch; we cabbed it directly to the stadium, and, sadly, missed Ankiel's first at-bat. But we hung in, and then the eighth inning came, and then ... well, you saw it.

We're not gonna get all emotional here, because we figure we've already exhausted your patience will all this, so just a few notes from the night.

• Ankiel is wearing No. 24. This is now the third different number Ankiel has worn for the Cardinals. He wore 66 when he initially pitched, 49 when he made his first comeback and now 24. Twenty four makes him look more like a hitter, like how a wide receiver wearing No. 6 looks faster than a guy wearing No. 84.

• Ankiel looked completely overmatched in his first three at-bats. And then the pitch he hit ... we have no idea how he flicked that over the wall. It was one thing to hear about Ankiel hitting home runs in bunches down in AAA; it was another thing to actually see it. The whole evening was surreal.

• We've never seen Tony LaRussa so excited. Ever. Afterwards, LaRussa said that, after Adam Wainwright's strikeout to win the World Series, it was the best moment he's had in a Cardinals uniform. We're not quite ready to go that far, but still.

• After the game, we stopped by Jack Buck's new restaurant — ominously called J. Buck's — at watched ESPNews. In the bottom right hand corner, it said, "BECKHAM PLAYS 21 MINUTES; ANKIEL HOMERS IN FIRST GAME BACK." Rick Ankiel, our Rick Ankiel, was a news alert on ESPN; this was like seeing your sister's wedding announcement show up on the crawl. ESPN, being ESPN, made sure to bookend the homer with clips of Ankiel in the 2000 postseason. You know how, a few months afer 9/11, the networks collectively decided footage of that day was too intense to just casually toss on television? ESPN should do that with the Ankiel 2000 video.

• But yes. The Natural. Young Musial. We don't know how the rest of this Ankiel experiment is gonna turn out, but for one night, one majestic night, it was perfect. So perfect, in fact, that we're gonna try it again tonight. As we've said before: If there's hope for Rick Ankiel, there's hope for all of us.