FanHouse Tony La Russa

Mark McGwire will end his baseball exile and accept a position with the St. Louis Cardinals as their hitting coach, a Cardinals source confirmed to FanHouse's Ed Price Sunday afternoon. He'll replace Hal McRae, who's held the position for five years. The story initially appeared on Brian McRae's Twitter account, though it's since been deleted.

Wednesday night, while John Smoltz was in the middle of his worst start with the Cardinals, he could be seen constantly trading balls with the home plate umpire, clearly unhappy with something. After the game ended, he said it was because he felt the balls were improperly rubbed down, causing them to be more slippery than normal and preventing him from getting a proper grip.

The story could've ended there, but apparently Tony La Russa and Dave Duncan have been reading a little bit too much Raymond Chandler lately, because they got their Phillip Marlowe on and after some investigating, are charging the Reds with a larger conspiracy.

Tony La Russa and his pitching coach Dave Duncan go together, as the saying goes, like peas and carrots. They've been coaching together since 1985, when Duncan joined La Russa's staff with the White Sox. Since then, they've jointly moved to Oakland and then St. Louis, with Duncan's strong pitching staffs anchoring La Russa's perennial contenders.

That's why it's so surprising today to read in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Duncan seems to be growing disillusioned with the Cardinals and may not return to the team, even if La Russa does come back for a 15th year with the Cards in 2010. Duncan's growing disillusionment seems to stem from two places: the trade of his son Chris to Boston -- which he believes the St. Louis media fueled -- and anger over the way the Cardinals are developing their minor league pitchers, which he believes is different from his own pitching philosophies.

Every Sunday, MLB FanHouse empties out its notebook in Baseball Brunch.

In two days, major league teams will begin playing with different rules than they did for the first five months of the season.

Some clubs will have 25-man rosters. Some will have 28-man rosters. Some will have 32-man rosters.

Some will have extra relievers if the game goes to extra innings. Some won't.

Some will have a pinch-running specialist. Some won't.

That's what we get with expanded September rosters.

Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action with a quick nod to what is ahead.

You Oughta Know ...
That it's possible to get ejected by the home plate umpire when you're standing in center field. That's exactly what happened to Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino, who questioned a call by Ed Rapuano in the seventh inning of Philadelphia's 12-3 loss to Florida by gesturing and jumping up and down in center and was then run from the game.

After Rapuano threw Victorino out, the speedy outfielder known as the Flyin' Hawaiian sprinted all the way to the infield to challenge his decision. It appeared he was going to make contact with the umpire, but he denied that was the case, explaining:

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There aren't enough superlatives in the world to describe how great a hitter Albert Pujols is, and how he continues to get better. Mired in a slump -- a slump for Pujols usually means he's gone five at bats without homering but this time it meant only two bombs since the All-Star break -- Pujols busted out in New York on Tuesday night, with a grand slam off of Sean Green to keep the Cardinals even with the Cubs atop the NL Central.

It was Albert's second home run of the game, so it appears we can stop worrying about that slump of his, but it's also the latest sign that pitchers may want to start taking a different approach with Senor Pujols when he comes to the plate with the bases loaded.

At this point, whatever remaining Mets players are healthy should be encased in bubble wrap.

A day after second baseman Luis Castillo sprained his left ankle on the dugout steps -- the Mets said he is day-to-day, and when they say that, they usually end up being wrong -- lefty Jonathon Niese left Wednesday's start in the second inning with a strained right hamstring.

"From what I understand right now we suspect it to be a tear," manager Jerry Manuel said.

As it turns out, it was a complete tear of the right hamstring from the bone, and the team announced Niese would have surgery and miss the rest of the season Wednesday night.

There's been a development out of Japan that makes our obsession with performance-enhancing drugs seem pretty silly. A professor at the University of Tokyo has created a pair of baseball-playing robots whose performance puts the greatest human players to shame.

The pitcher-bot throws 90 percent of its pitches in the strike zone. Not that would help against the hitter-bot, which will never swing at any pitch out of the strike zone and makes contact with almost 100 percent of pitches in the zone. Finally, we'll hear the end of complaints about how quickly baseball games end!

Do you ever get the feeling that Cardinals manager Tony La Russa just really needs a hug? It seems that he's always mad at somebody or some thing. Whether he's suing Twitter because somebody started a fake account in his name, complaining about the Cubs or feuding with former players like Jim Edmonds, the man just seems to have a chip on his shoulder. I'm actually waiting for the day when he calls out the sun for having an East Coast bias for rising in New York an hour before it does in St. Louis.

So it's no shock that there's somebody else who has caught La Ire of La Russa, but it is somewhat surprising that it's a member of the Cardinals extended family this time. It seems La Russa is upset with Cardinals television broadcaster and former Redbirds pitcher Al Hrabosky.

Over the last few months, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa has been involved in a complicated legal matter with social networking site Twitter over the unauthorized use of his name and person for a parody, kinda-sorta identity thieving Tony La Russa Twitter page. Now that the matter has been settled, it is safe for us to write about without Tom Nieto (or whoever) rushing to his legal team to protest the idea that he once dropped a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the ground outside of a Radio Shack.

This afternoon's Dugout is @ the jump.