Shortly after the 20th century turned, when the St. Louis Cardinals started winning pennants at a more rapid rate, some baseball expert pegged the Redbirds “the wave of the future” or something similar. And sure enough, St. Louis now chases 19 pennants, which would be the most in the National League.
This past weekend, though, the Atlanta Braves managed to make them look merely human.
Entering a St. Louis-Atlanta series, Atlanta defeated St. Louis 6-3 Friday, 2-0 Saturday on an eighth-inning double by Atlanta’s Andrelton Simmons and 5-2 Sunday.
St. Louis (62-40) is still slightly ahead of Atlanta (60-45) in the battle for the National League’s best record, though Pittsburgh (61-42) are second in line at the moment.
Approaching August, any hardened fan probably would line up the NL contenders like this: 1. St Louis, 2. Pittsburgh, 3. Cincinnati, 4. Atlanta, 5. Los Angeles Dodgers.
At midseason the Pirates are holding steady 1 1/2 games behind the Cardinals, as they more or less have been doing since opening day. The Cincinnati Reds (59-46), previously toe-to-toe with St. Louis and Pittsburgh in the early going, would now be 60-some percentage points behind in a virtual tie with St. Louis and Pittsburgh. But if you take a fancy to this system, don’t use the rent money.
They didn’t exactly recall the Ali-Foreman-Frazier heavyweight glory years, but the trio restored some entertainment value to boxing’s lower weight divisions.
Fight fans who preferred a higher level of skill in their champions needed only to look to Jermaine Taylor of Little Rock, who continued to dazzle the middleweight division or Floyd Mayweather Jr., the undisputed czar of the lower weight classes.
In April, Mayweather, considered the sport’s best pound-for-pound competition, breezed to a unanimous decision victory over Zab Judah in Las Vegas to claim the IBF welterweight belt. It was Mayweather’s fourth title, and the fourth weight class he had conquered.
Jacob Ruppert, Hank Day and James “Deacon” White were inducted by the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Sunday at Cooperstown, N. Y. The three men represent the Class of 2013 and they’ve all been dead for more than 70 years. Deacon White, a barehanded catcher, was the first batter in the first professional game. That was May 4, 1871.
Sports, Pages 16 on 07/30/2013