I've been to the new park only once and honestly had a better seat than I would've had for the same price in the old park. The new park has a nice view of the city, which obviously the old one lacked, and on the field it plays pretty fair, which is a positive. So I've been a little bit confused about some of the whining about the new park. Yeah, it's a mallpark with a hyper-active Build-A-Bear stand, but that's only a distraction if you let it. The press box is way up there, apparently upsetting Bernie Miklasz to no end, but that's not going to matter to me any time soon. So what is it?

CardNilly has documented his troubles, and he paints an ugly picture. It's a rookie park and I can excuse some mistakes as the club and the vendors (and the fans) figure out what needs to be fixed. What's inexcusable is the club ignoring the problem. This isn't a search for a 900-OPS, good-defense, under-30 outfielder. Taking care of the customer just shouldn't be that difficult. If the Cardinals want to keep calling St. Louis baseball heaven, then they've got some work to do. Otherwise Bill DeWitt's in danger of being known as the man who traded away the venerable cookie cutter because it was an old forty.

On the baseball front, after seeing Jason Marquis get lit up again, I got to wondering just how bad Jason Marquis's season is getting. Looking at his Marquis's peripherals, his K-rate has fallen below the pitching equivalent to the Mendoza line of 4.5 K per 9 IP, and of course he leads the league in homers allowed (Josh Beckett, of all people, is the only AL pitcher with more). So let's look at pitcher-seasons with bad K/HR ratios and compare them to Marquis's 2.65; since Marquis just crossed the 150 IP mark, let's set that as a minimum. Bottom Ten since 1955:

Well, that's disappointing. If Marquis is going to pitch horribly, then he could at least chase history. If the season ended today (or if Marquis was DFA'd tomorrow), then Marquis's season would be good for only 73rd since 1955, and Scott Elarton and Carlos DSilva have a shot at being worse. There are a couple of other familiar names further down the list, including Jose Lima, Bob Forsch, Don Newcombe and Milt Pappas in his final season, although many of them were on their last legs.