Good riddance, Yadi

The fires of dislike and hatred are not going to go away even though my baseball fandom was thrown in the trash. The force of our animus for former rivals is still strong despite the ebb and flow of our passions. You can never get past the Mookie Betts trade, that is for sure. That doesn't mean you won't say "Yankees Suck!" on your deathbed

Last night, the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series. Thank you so much.

For the last two decades, we have been hearing about the magic of Yadi, as if he had been given to us so that we could see him. As if St. Louis could produce anything other than swamp ass and pizza, he was depicted as a scion of the special powers that only St. Louis could produce. It wasn't just that Yadi was a great catcher, but that he could only have been developed by the Cards. They were the only ones deserving of such magic.

I have my ass.

Was he a good player a decade ago? It's absolutely true. It was a decade ago. He has been at the plate for seven years. For a long time, the writers around the country will wax poetic about how symbolic it was that Molina hit a pop-tart of an opposite field single in his last at bat, and how representative it was of the hitter he'd been. He's specialized in it for a long time.

They will say that it goes past the numbers. They will wail that you can't understand Molina by simply looking at a stat sheet. They will claim that he set the way. Yadi was such a leader that he bitched about balls and strikes while the game was being played. He quit his team to go watch a basketball team he owns play and was thrown out of the game as a result. There are players on other teams who missed games to do something. I bet I can guess.

If that happens, you will be told about all the numbers that say he should be a first baseman in the Hall of Fame. Most voters fall in love with the Cards. Who has the same amount of fWAR in less than 500 games? There is a man named Russell Martin. Is Russell Martin a Hall player? Who was worth less fWAR under 500 games? Brian is the son of Brian. The lifestyle of St. Louis would have been perfect for McCann's baseball police act. In 400 fewer games, Joe Mauer was worth less fWAR.

In almost 1,000 fewer games, he did it in a different way. That is what a Hall of Fame player looks like.

The problem is that the Cards have been punting at the catcher position for a long time and now they can sign a catcher who can hit. Willson Contreras will plunge my heart into my ankle for the rest of my life. When we have an automatic strike zone in two years, that won't matter at all. When the Cards had a non-entity with the bat behind the plate, we might have had it better.

There is always a player that connects with fans even if he isn't a star. That shows something about them when it comes to the A's. Do you think I did? The fans of A's and the fans of theCardinals are both cool. A's fans don't think of themselves as the bellwether for baseball. A lot of it sounded the same as when he said that he wasn't an active drain on the team until the very end. He wouldn't. Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado are happy to let the attention go to a guy who couldn't hit the ball out of the ground.

Yadi will get a standing ovation from those people when he is shown on the jumbotron during a game. We won't be able to rid him of him.

This will do for now, but it won't last. Yadi, get up here.