The Reds beat the Cardinals tonight 6-2 to win the series and clinch a winning record at home. Around this time of year, we'll take about anything to get excited about, but it's a joy to beat the Cardinals any time, any place.

Brandon “Pickle Man” Claussen held the Cards to just two runs through seven innings, but it didn't look like that was going to be enough. The Reds provided him only one run's worth of support in that amount of time when the combination of Ryan Freel on second, Felipe Lopez making contact, and Albert Pujols suddenly forgetting how to throw resulted in a Red run crossing the plate in the fourth.

The tide turned for the good guys in the eighth, however, when Lopez and Austin Kearns each took a turn knocking in a run, Cardinals' pitcher Julian Tavarez loaded the bases, and Little Edwin Encarnacion contributed a bases-clearing double to score the third, fourth, and fifth runs of the inning.

David Weathers pitched the top of the ninth and took the Cards down 1-2-3 to put the game away.

Here's looking forward to more sound defeats of the Cardinals when they meet up again in St. Louis for the final series of the season starting Friday, September 30. I'm already getting excited about it.

Go Reds!

I wanted to come up with a real witty smack-talkin' fake new piece, probably involving witchcraft and robots, for tonight's game. Unfortunately, I seem to be suffering from a severe case of lack of inspiration.

Don't get too close, I wouldn't want it to spread to all of Redsdom. Oh, I see it's too late for that.

Instead, I'll just re-post this picture from smack-talk many moons ago. At least it'll give me something to look at as I trade snaps with Bellyscratcher while listening to the game on the radio.