Woo-hoo! The Reds have taken over first place in the NLC, and while they’ve briefly held the top spot in the division early in the season before, the series to get them here was such a rush. My thoughts are too all-over-the-place for paragraphs, so you get them in bullet-point form:

• After the first game of the series, Jonny said the Cards really had Joey Votto’s number. That’s when I realized that–deep-down–I don’t really believe that anyone can stop Joey Votto except Joey Votto. He’s been trying real hard these last few games, but what he must realize is that he must do, or do not. There is no try.
• I think Bronson Arroyo is well-suited to the kind of atmosphere the team has right now, where he’s having to keep up with the kids in the rotation. It inspires Good-Royo and chases away Bad-Royo.
• Which is good, because the Reds will go as far as their starting rotation can take them. It doesn’t hurt that they actually have good defense for a change.
• I <3 Jonny Gomes. That super-intense, borderline-frenzied look he sometimes gets reminds me so fondly of Ryan Freel. I think he even says, “you know” a million times when interviewed after the game, just like Freel used to.
• The Cardinals don’t seem to realize what a serious problem they have. Carp getting huffy when someone shows frustration, Card bloggers saying Gomes shouldn’t flip his bat, Card commentators saying the umps should show respect to Pujols. It’s one thing to go onto the field expecting to win; it’s another thing to go onto the field expecting people to let you win. This sense of entitlement screams sick culture. If the Cards were a Fortune 500 company, they’d be on their way to hostile takeover.
• While I was at the game on Friday, the Civil Rights segments on the big board talked about not just race in baseball, but gender and sexuality, too. I don’t think that woman is going to make it into the big leagues any time soon, but it did occur to me that it’s going to be in my lifetime when we have the first openly gay active player. In fact, it may be in the next few years. Now it’s just a race to see who owns up first. Life will be tough for that guy in some ways, but he’ll also inspire a huge following and validate a lot of younger guys out there. Plus, he’ll go down in history. Maybe not quite Jackie Robinson level history, but still pretty bad-ass.

The Red Hot Family was in Cincinnati last night to see first hand the game that might have seen the Reds take over the NLC. While it didn’t turn out that way, it was still a helluva game and we immortalized some of the excitement for this installment of The 8th Inning Show.

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Boxscore

In the first game of the battle for first place, the Cincinnati Reds didn’t have quite enough to defeat the St. Louis Cardinals. St. Louis moves to 1 1/2 games ahead of Cincinnati.

Aaron Harang started and was solid, with the exception of two long fly balls to Albert Pujols and Ryan Ludwick. In most other parks, they would have been caught at the warning track, but in Great American, they fell into the first row of the seats. The perils of being a flyball pitcher for the Reds. They should do something about that. Oh yeah, Mike Leake goes tomorrow.

Both of those home runs were 2 run shots, and were all the Cardinals could manage. The Reds attempted a comeback, but fell short. They scored 2 on their own 2-run shot from Drew Stubbs in the 7th. Then in the 9th, Jonny Gomes singled and was driven in by by Drew Stubbs. The comeback faltered, though, when Ramon Hernandez swung at the first pitch he saw and grounded into a double play.

At the game, I at-first thought I heard the announcer say Chris Heisey was pinch-hitting, but he was instead only pinch-running for Ryan Hanigan. I think I would’ve preferred Heisey over Hernandez. It would have been a gutsy move instead of throwing old “Mr. Clutch” in there.

The Reds send out the aforementioned groundball pitcher Mike Leake today, while the Cardinals counter with Adam Wainwright at 7:40pm. Should be a good one.

Boxscore

The Houston Astros finished their sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals today, beating the first place team and the undefeated Chris Carpenter.

The Astros rode the best start of Bud Norris’ career, as he went 8 innings and allowed 1 run on 6 hits while striking out 8.

The Cy Young winner Chris Carpenter got his first loss of the season thanks to a terrible 3rd. Lance Berkman singled in the Astros first run. He was followed by Carlos Lee, who, with 2 on, popped out to the shortstop. He was frustrated by his failure and slammed his bat into the ground.

Apparently, Chris Carpenter has been paying attention to the sore-loser antics of Albert Pujols, and took exception to Lee. After a few words, the dugouts emptied. Eventually, sad, widdle Carpenter–the guy who’d actually won in the battle against Lee–got over his hurt feelings enough to return to playing a child’s game. Except that he didn’t calm down quite enough as Hunter Pence took him deep to give the Astros a 4-0 lead.

The loss narrows the Cardinals’ lead over the Cincinnati Reds to 1/2 game. The series this weekend could be quite enjoyable. I’m hoping for some fireworks. With this many crybabies on the Cardinals roster, it shouldn’t be too hard to get them riled up.