How I dislike your pageantry and the overabundance of the twin-set set in the stands. But whatever works, and it’s always nice to see the Cards Hall-of-Fame contingent out and about. Red, in particular, looks spry; rather than open the door of the Ford Mustang and walk out, he did a little Dukes-of-Hazzard spin-hop over the driver’s side.

Before I move on to that lovely game, a word about the Ponson game and subsequent loss of all confidence in everybody. Ponson first: MO Boiler, in the comments, notes that as the smiling-heavy-pitcher du jour he’s on the short list for a buddy icon, a fat nickname, and a posse. I’m willing to grant him a provisional posse and use of the nickname Heavy P, pending further review. His fastball really surprised me; it’s got a lot of movement, and he locates it well. His changeup looked good, but his breaking pitch was really all over the place. Overall, I’m convinced now that he can at least do a good Suppan impression every five days, provided he keeps his head on straight. Is that better than the potential of Young Reyes coming in and giving the Cardinals three legit stoppers in the rotation? Probably not, but it looks like an astute pick-up by Jocketty.

Now, Bullpen Meltdown ‘06. Now, I like the notion that Cardinals fans are somehow the best in America, but it’s no locktight designation to me. For one, if a player has two or three bad outings in a row–Izzy–or gets off to a bad start–Juancarnacion, Spivey–he gets jumped on, regardless of previous track record or future performance. And if a player has two or three good outings in a row–Simo-Man, Bo Hart, Aaron Miles–he’s bulletproof, regardless of previous track record or future performance.

Isringhausen had some awful games. His velocity was off, and he had no command. So now people are convinced that he’s Done with a capital D, despite having put up a 2.14 ERA last year. The problem with this idea is that his velocity has been down for the past two years, it’s just nobody noticed or cared because he was even more effective than he was before. Now that he’s doing poorly, people take a closer look at the velocity, see no 96-mph fastballs–a target he hasn’t hit consistently since 2003, at the latest–and think it’s what’s causing the problems. It looked to me that he was just having trouble with his fastball command. Because of that, he never got a chance to move on to his curveball, and he got knocked around the ballpark when he tried to sneak a mediocre fastball through the zone. In Monday’s game, he started off with his fastball looking marginally better than it did before. But he got the last hitter of the game out by leading him off with two 75-mph curveballs.

In any case, I think this is all going to turn out to be more anti-hype than an actual severe regression on the part of the bullpen. It probably won’t be as good as last year’s model, and in particular I’m not yet sold on Hancock or Rincon (who gets eviscerated by lboros in a recent VEB post), but Looper/Wainwright/Thompson should be a solid contingent of righties to hand the ball off to Izzy.

Now, back to the opener. I was there, and when not tending to my sunburns thoroughly enjoyed the game. How about Swamp Gas? Not the hitting, although I certainly wouldn’t mind him homering every other start from here on out, but the way he went after hitters. In 2005, without having seen Mulder’s Oakland tenure personally, he seemed to me to be a left-handed Jeff Suppan. He nibbled at the strike zone, he threw a fastball that topped out around 90, and he occasionally hung a curveball that would find itself wedged tighter in the seats than Ray King at a Barbie tea party. This year–and two outings is most certainly a small sample size–he seems to be more confident in his stuff, and it’s largely paid off. (Not that the hitting wasn’t impressive; Capellan’s velocity was down, but that was a gorgeous swing.)

New Busch review: I still wish it didn’t exist, but it’s a nice stadium. The most egregious happening is the opening of a Build-a-Bear Workshop in the concourses. Not only do the Fredbird dolls sold by the store have disturbingly large beaks and murderous eyes, but people were waiting an hour–during the game–for the honor of stuffing a red bear full of fluff and a voice box that says something like “I want to give you a BEAR hug!!!!” During the game! Opening day! Their tickets should be revoked, and when they try to tell their grandchildren about how they went to the first game ever at Old Busch III, an employee of the team should break through the wall Kool-Aid Man style and give said grandchildren the horrible truth: their supposed Cardinal-fan ancestry missed Mark Mulder’s first career home run because somebody was holding up the line at the Bear Birth Certificate Station.