Tigers manager Jim Leyland is very much the Man of The Moment, but there’s at least one baseball fan in Denver with a working memory. From Bad Altitude’s Mark Donohue.

This is a man who did once after all treat the Colorado franchise in much the same way Denny Neagle treats the ladies of the evening. A man whose unbroken streak of sage, almost precognitive button-pushing for Detroit has not for some reason included the “season-long sulk” technique he pioneered in Denver. A man whose reserves of creativity were such that when the robotic pattern of bunting and hit-and-runs he had blindly followed for his entire career did not somehow breed success with the Rockies he completely gave up on the team and his players, rather than have to suffer the indignity of actually absorbing some new ideas.

Today’s item: When Leyland took the job as Rockies manager in 1999, his wife refused to move to Denver with him because of the Columbine tragedy. Leyland was apparently so broken up about her absence that he decided to not do his job and instead steal millions of dollars from his employers and then lie his way out of town after one year of a contracted three. Of course, it makes perfect sense for a woman in her late fifties to be terrified about her potential safety in Colorado (the murder capital of the world) after an isolated incident involving disturbed teenagers. You should also never visit Ireland because the terrorists will get you, not drink Pepsi because you’ll get poked by a syringe, never take aspirin because some of them are poison, and take the air bags out of your car because this one time this one dude totally got killed by one.

Your wife is a paranoid loon, and that’s why (everybody)…YOU SUCK, JIM LEYLAND!

The Journal News’ Peter Abraham, perhaps unimpressed with St. Louis bouncing back from their September swoon, writes “the Cardinals will have a lot of questions to answer if they can’t beat John Maine and Oliver Perez to get to the World Series. Than again, in a one-paper town with blindly loyal fans, they’ll get a pass.”

Loyal, perhaps, blindy so, probably not ; Cardinals Dispora surveys the the scene prior to Game 7 :

Positives : Suppan has been brilliant in big games, we have the best player in baseball batting 3rd, in a close game Wagner is susceptible, we still aren™t supposed to be here and we certainly aren™t supposed to win a game 7, John Kruk has flopped over the Mets side again marking the 897th time he has predicted a different winner for the NL. Also some negatives: we™re on the road in NY, we can™t hit LH pitchers worth crud, Carlos Beltan™s mole, and the undeniable stench of pond scum.

Mike Mets, perhaps not a big Mike & The Mad Dog fan, has had enough with the nattering nabobs of negativity.

I get the fact that Oliver Perez isn’t the comfortable choice for a game 7 starter, and don’t need to read the same thing 100 times. I don’t need Ken Rosenthal telling me yet again that Omar Minaya could have had Barry Zito for Lastings Milledge, a bag of balls and some old back issues of Playboy. I only hope that some team hires Ken soon, since he so obviously has a better grasp on the game than the man who built this Mets team. Finally, I don’t need to be told any more how ugly this series has looked to those pundits whose opinions matter so little to me now. If the Mets pull this thing out tonight, this NLCS will look like a Victoria’s Secret model to me. In the long run, the only thing that really gets remembered is who won, and that’s as it should be. Let those with no rooting interest in tonight’s game concern themselves with aesthetics.

Fuckin’-a, Mike. Well said. Oliver Perez just retired The Scrappiest Human Alive on a fly ball to Carlos Beltran, then blew away Preston Wilson. He’s only 25 consecutive outs away from a perfect game.

Sorry to be a party pooper, but the towels are a lame idea. It’s kinda like my dad once said of Warrior Soul promotional condoms — just because they’re free, it doesn’t mean you have to use one.

(OK, my Dad never said anything about Warrior Soul or promotional condoms. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. But I’m sure someone else knows what I’m talking about).