Monday Fungos: Two Birds on a Bat Walk into a Bar…

Tough weekend for run-differential fans as the Cardinals topped the Cubs 34-31 but dropped the series. Boxing enthusiasts sure had to love that accidental rope-a-dope by Jon Lester, though. By letting the Cardinals’ bats pummel his pitches and score more than half their series runs (18) in his start, he left them exhausted for most of the other games.

So is Lester a mad genius or just another dazed hit-and-run victim? Either way, let’s salve the pitching staff’s bruises by devoting an entire Fungos to yet another palliative jib-jabbing of St. Louis, the “Gateway to the West,” a city so awesome it actually markets itself as the best city in America to leave.

1. If you created an all-Ozzie Mount Rushmore, would Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith even make it? Or would it just be Ozzy Osbourne, Ozzie Nelson, and most of the Guillen family?
2. The fading Cardinals franchise seems like that online poker player whose chip stack has shrunken so much his all-in threats scare no one.
3. St. Louis is basically one breached dike away from becoming just another seasonal lake in the Ozarks
4. In the avian world, any joke that starts “Two red birds on a bat walk into a bar” is now considered politically incorrect.
5. I understand fired former manager Mike Matheny’s pique over criticism he treated his African American players harshly. After all, he worked for a franchise whose greatest manager forced everyone to call him “Whitey.”
6. My two favorite player names on the Cardinals:

   

   • Reliever John Brebbia, whose last name sounds like a drug engineered to treat his own excessive facial hair condition.**
   • Jedd Gyorko, who sounds like either a new character from the Bizarro Hall of Justice or a line of Gyro-flavored line of Jack Links products.
7. I wonder what St. Louis hates more: being considered fly-over country by politicians or a pass-through city for Chicago sewage?
8. So few movies use St. Louis as a setting its local tourism board still uses clips from National Lampoon’s Vacation. “Roll ’em up.”

** Please consult with a physician before re-using this joke.