Forgive the delay

As you could tell from the post below, we had a fire alarm at 1 frickin 30 in the morning. It took me a while to fall back asleep so that caused me to postpone my alarm from 10:30 AM to almost 11:00 AM or so this morning.

The Matt Morris era in St. Louis has come to a close. I guess Chris Carpenter is now my favorite pitcher with Matt Morris gone. I hope Rick Ankiel is progressing with his conversion to the outfield because that was so sad watching the playoffs and finding him losing his strike zone.

"I had a great run with St. Louis," Morris said. "They're a class organization, and they treated me great throughout my years there. It just seemed like the right time to move on. There's not much more to it than that. This was the right time to make a move, and we decided it was best for us."[...]

Morris remained complimentary of the club and manager Tony La Russa throughout Monday's appearance. However, a friend of Morris' said last weekend the pitcher was bruised by the club's negotiating tact.

"Hurt may be too strong a word for it," the friend said, "but it may also be a good word."

Morris carries a 101-62 record to San Francisco after making 237 appearances, including 206 starts, with the Cardinals, who selected him in the first round of the 1995 draft out of Seton Hall University. He finished third in NL Cy Young balloting after winning 22 games in 2001 and signed a three-year, $27 million extension a year before becoming eligible for free agency.

Shoulder problems and the surgery they necessitated forced Morris to discard a power pitcher's mentality for a more efficient one. He labored through 202 innings in 2004 before surgery and pitched 191 2/3 innings with 14 wins in 2005. La Russa trusted him enough in 2004 to start him on three days' rest in Game 2 of the World Series. Calling him "a stallion," La Russa also included him in this October's postseason rotation despite a 4-8 second half.

The Cardinals clinched the Division Series over the San Diego Padres in Morris' Game 3 start but lost Game 3 of the National League Championship Series behind him.

Larry Joe Campbell will be taking a break from improvisation for a while.

I'm trying my best not to be blue over the Big Blue. I want the Cats to win. They are 6-3 this season with losses to Iowa, North Carolina, and Indiana. I won't be previewing the game til Friday at the earliest since they ban UK Athletics on campus due to bandwidth.

That's all for now. Back to the Pete Rose paper. Fun times.