Really?  Randy Wolf?  Look me in the eyes and tell me Ed Wade shouldn’t be fired… yeah… you’re a liar.

In no way did I want this to be my first post here.  I envisioned something more epic and creative, but I cannot let this stand.  While I do not believe that sports figures have to be role models, and I believe parents should parent their own children, the PSA in the title is just good information.  Bernie Miklasz, a writer for St. Louis Today.com (St. Louis Dispatch) wrote a simply awful piece of garbage yesterday.  I am a baseball purist in just about every sense of the word.  I think batters should get beaned if they crowd the plate.  I believe if you are man enough to deliver that beaning you should be man enough to fight over it.  I believe a second baseman in the base path with the ball is fair game.  I even believe that a catcher blocking the plate should get railroaded.  I do not, however, subscribe to the idea that sliding into a guy who is looking away and gave you the plate should in any way be okay.  I also believe that Tony LaRussa is evil, but that’s a topic for another conversation later.  What Pujols did was wrong, he apologized for it, and Brandon Backe called him on it.  It was over in my book.  But for a columnist to say it was okay, and to even encourage more of it?  That’s unthinkable.  You do not hit a man from behind, and you do not hit a man trying to stop you from getting nailed with a ball while you are sliding into home on a plate that was in no way blocked. 

 I was at the game and in the bang bang situation I didn’t think Pujols did much wrong, but this picture says it all:

Knee out, elbow out, looking right at his legs.  Albert knew what he was doing.  I don’t believe he intended to hurt Towles, but he certainly meant to take him out.  Either way, being tough is one thing, being dirty is another.  I’m giving Pujols the benefit of the doubt, his teammate told him to slide, and there is only one reason to slide and that is if a play at the plate is imminent.  For me, that means take out the catcher and I wouldn’t put it past LaRussa to tell his player to get Albert down even when it wasn’t necessary.