So it’s all tied up 2 – 2 now and true Cardinals fans (as opposed by playoff types like me) may be disappointed in their performance, but as long as they avoid being placed in an elimination bind their situation is not so bad.

No one on the Brewers staff seems to be able to solve the Pujols problem and Zack Greinke with his lousy post season starts (37th and 40th out of 56) and 8.18 ERA is unlikely to be the key.  They’ll be reduced to pitching around him.

Opposing will be Jaime Garcia who’s pitched better than his record.  Also Berkman will be back in the lineup after a day of rest.

Still, it’s likely to be a low scoring game since Busch Stadium is much friendlier to pitchers than Miller Park.

I’ll remind myself that this weekend is also a Formula One weekend with Qualifying in Yeongam tonight at 1 am.  I’m not sure what I’ll talk about as I missed practice in last night’s excitement.

#occupyeverywhere

A little Meta housekeeping.

Our 2 sites, The Stars Hollow Gazette and DocuDharma, have been experiencing service interruptions, some of them extended and inconvenient.  Last month Soapblox updated our software and shifted our hosting to Amazon cloud servers.  A few temporary glitches are only to be expected.

TheMomCat and I are aware of these problems, as are the technical support people at Soapblox.  Edger is acting as a contact person for us and several other sites he supports which we think has the benefit of not flooding inboxes with too many duplicate messages.

On a personal note I experienced a hard crash on my main computer and have been unable to access my customary environment for the last few weeks.  I hope my level of obnoxiousness has not suffered materially.

I have arrived at what I think is a reasonable hardware solution and over the next few days I’ll be trying to get that functional.  I may decide to bore you with the details at some point because I think the process has been instructive and may benefit readers who are considering similar situations.

As always, thank you for your indulgence.

Occupy Wall Street Stays in Park

By Aaron Rutkoff, The Wall Street Journal

October 14, 2011, 6:57 AM ET

The real-estate company that owns the small park at the center of the Occupy Wall Street movement has postponed a planned cleaning of the site, a New York City deputy mayor announced early Friday morning.

The decision by Brookfield Office Properties Inc. to delay its planned cleaning of Zuccotti Park means that the protesters who have been living at the site for nearly a month will not be forced to depart and remove the tarps, beds and other items accumulated during the ongoing demonstration.

Wall Street sit-in goes global Saturday

Reuters

Fri Oct 14, 2011 6:52am EDT

For an October revolution, dress warm.

That’s the word going out – politely – on the Web to rally street protests on Saturday around the globe from New Zealand to Alaska via London, Frankfurt, Washington and, of course, New York, where the past month’s Occupy Wall Street movement has inspired a worldwide yell of anger at banks and financiers.

…

Italian police are preparing for tens of thousands to march in Rome against austerity measures planned by the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Yet in crisis-ravaged Athens, where big protests have seen violence at times of late, a sense of fatigue and futility may limit numbers on Saturday. In Madrid, where thousands of young “indignados”, or “angry ones”, camped out for weeks, many also feel the movement has run out of steam since the summer.

Germans, where sympathy for southern Europe’s debt troubles is patchy, the financial centre of Frankfurt, and the European Central Bank in particular, is expected to be a focus of marches calling by the Spanish-inspired Real Democracy Now movement.

NYC official says cleanup of protest site has been postponed; demonstrators consider new march

By Associated Press

Updated: Friday, October 14, 7:15 AM

NEW YORK – The cleanup of a plaza in lower Manhattan where protesters have been camped out for a month was postponed early Friday, sending cheers up from a crowd that had feared the effort was merely a pretext to evict them.

Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway said the owners of the private park, Brookfield Office Properties, had put off the cleaning. Supporters of the protesters had started streaming into the park in the morning darkness before the planned cleaning, forming a crowd of several hundred chanting people.

“I’ll believe it when we’re able to stay here,” said protester Peter Hogness, 56, a union employee from Brooklyn. “One thing we have learned from this is that we need to rely on ourselves and not on promises from elected officials.”

Nobel Prize-Winning Former President Of Poland To Visit Occupy Wall Street

By Christopher Robbins, Gothamist

October 12, 2011 4:14 PM

Lech Walesa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former president of Poland, will show his support of Occupy Wall Street by paying Zuccotti Park a visit. “How could I not respond,” Walesa said, “The thousands of people gathered near Wall Street are worried about the fate of their future, the fate of their country. This is something I understand.”

4 live streams courtesy of Elliott @ Firedog Lake below.

EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION: Keep Bloomberg and Kelly From Evicting #OWS

Posted Oct. 13, 2011, 2:14 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

EMERGENCY #OWS EVICTION DEFENSE:

Prevent the forcible closure of Occupy Wall Street

Tell Bloomberg: Don’t Foreclose the Occupation.

NEED MASS TURN-OUT: 6AM FRIDAY EVICTION DEFENSE

**SHOW UP AT MIDNIGHT**

This is an emergency situation. Please take a minute to read this, and please take action and spread the word far and wide.

(h/t tahoebasha3, riverdaughter, Joyce Arnold, and lambert)

Live streaming video courtesy of TheMomCat–

As bad as you think Lohse is (and he had a terrible 5 Run 6th against the Phillies), Wolf was positively torched in the 5 Run 1st by the Diamondbacks and surrendered another 2 in the 3rd.

So this might be a high scoring game.

With a 2 – 1 Series advantage, the Cardinals need not leave the friendly confines of Busch Stadium while in the battle of the beers the Brewers desperately need a road victory to send it back to Miller Park.

Either way a defeat won’t crush the Cards who look to be the better team for all their wild cardiness (heh), but the Brewers, while not in desperation mode just yet, will be trying hard to even this one up.

Up Date by TheMomCat:

The site server was down but we are back. Here is a recap of what has happened so far:

MLCS Brewers at Cardinals Game 4:

Weather could be a factor. It’s very windy

Line up

Top of the 1st: Pitching for Cardinals is Kyle Lohse

1 out; 2 out;

Brewers’  Braun Base hit, single

Brewers’ Fielder strikes out, side retires one runner left on

Bottom of 1st: Randy Wolf pitching for the Brewers

1 out; 2 outs; 3rd out inning over

Top of the 2nd:  1 out at 1st, 2nd out; 3rd out on a fly ball

Bottom of the 2nd: 1 out; Solo home run by Matt Halliday

1 – 0 Cardinals with 1 out.

Ground rule double by Molina

Base hit to 1st, Molina on 3rd; 1 out

Base hit out at 1st, runners on 2nd & 3rd

Pitcher Lohse at bat and je strikes out

Top of the 3rd: 1 out; Brewer pitcher Randy Wolf with a double

Ugh.  I think we’re at the ‘pray for rain’ stage of this particular series.  Fortunately there’s almost a 100% chance of that.

If Chaac fails to come through (and goodness knows he doesn’t much listen to Rick Perry’s prayers) we have another Verlander/Wilson matchup.  For the supposed aces of their staffs neither one of these guys has looked particularly dominant, of course that may be because of their Joe Btfsplk-like rainmaking qualities.

From here on the Tigers have to win every single game which is always a tough row to hoe.  Additionally they’re suffering from injuries to Martinez, Young, and Ordonez.  If you see any of them play it’s merely a sign of desperation.

In contrast the Rangers need pick up only 1 of 3 remaining (with 2 of those home games) and their only questionable starter is Beltre.  Despite (or perhaps because of) that the latest betting line favors the Tigers in this particular contest.

Who knows?  That’s why they play the games.

All even going into St. Louis where we will have a 55% chance of rain and the question is whether Chris Carpenter will be available for Game 7 if it happens and it happens on time.

He’ll be facing Yovani Gallardo in another duel of the aces.  Nothing more boring than that.

The Brewers are under a bit of pressure because of their loss Monday, not from the margin which was due to an incredible performance from Pujols, but because strategically they have to win on the road against the Cardinals.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as you are aware I’m rooting for the Cards to win it all, but it’s causing some tension with my dad, Richard, who’s an honorary Cheesehead (I’m only half troll).

Not that he cares all that much, both he and Mom are die hard Yankee fans since they moved their games to Newsradio 88 (traffic and weather together at 8, 18, 28, 38, 48, and 58 minutes past the hour) and he shows more interest in hating on the Rangers (“they have ‘Texas’ in their name and that’s all I need to know”).

Yup, us Metropolitan supporters are masochistic rebels.

Yay!  Detroit wins one and Richard is pleased.

One win does not a series decide and the Tigers are still in a hole that only with good luck and a win in Arlington will they dig their way out of.

Today we’ll see Rick Porcello and Matt Harrison.  It’s basically a pick ’em based on ERA, though Porcello got pasted in his start against the Yankees and the Rangers’ Harrison performed quite competently in Game 4 with the Devil Rays.

On the injury front Beltray, Martinez, and Young are all expected to start.  It’s been raining in Detroit and we could have yet another delay.

I am soooo looking forward to that.

Many people don’t remember that Yankee Doodle was originally a song sung by the British to mock the rag-tag appearance of the Colonials.

They later adopted it as an anthem of their own and it endures as one of the most popular patriotic songs to this day.

Just so this particular ditty has appeared in the inboxes of European Bond and Forex traders and those 1%ers sing it (to the tune of I Will Survive) without the irony it so richly encapsulates.

Try this 3 line replacement-

Sings a little truer now, doesn’t it?

Say what you like about the Nutmeg State, we have fine taste in traitors.

Well, I can’t pretend the results in this series so far are what I would wish.  At best the Tigers can hope to win at least once in Arlington and advance.  I’m sure they’re gratified that Obama has declared he’d rather watch them than the Republican debate.

Me?  I’m not so sure.

The Rangers will be putting up Colby Lewis who has an ERA of 13 (yup, you can expect him to give up 13 runs for every 9 innings pitched) against the Tigers this year with a substantially superior but still sucky 4.66 ERA last year.  Rangers fans will say that he’s a different pitcher in the post-season with an ERA of only 1.65.

The Tigers will counter with Doug Fister who is much, much better on paper.  Still, while it’s difficult to claim any but an elimination game is a ‘must win’, if they don’t succeed tonight it’s hard to see any way through to the World Series.

Another positive sign for the Tigers is the Rangers record of futility at Comerica Park.  Negative signs are that Magglio Ordonez’s injury may mark end of his career and his replacement Delmon Young will sit tonight after aggravating his oblique strain.