FanHouse Tony LaRussa

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!

While everyone's been following the on-again, off-again, on-again twists and turns surrounding the attempt to make Moneyball into a motion picture, another baseball movie based on a book has quietly been filling out it's lineup card.

Three Nights in August, the book about noted Twitter-hater Tony La Russa by noted blog-hater and author Buzz Bissinger is moving toward the silver screen with the help of a veteran of another big-screen baseball picutre. Billy Bob Thornton, from the wholly unneccesary remake of The Bad News Bears, has signed on to produce the big-screen version of Bissinger's tome about a 2003 series between La Russa's Cardinals and the Cubs.

It hasn't been the greatest week for Cubs manager Lou Piniella. Not only is he feeling the heat of the Chicago media with the Cubs scuffling, but he's also gotten into an argument with Milton Bradley in which he called his right fielder a "piece of [expletive]." Regardless of whether the exchange should have ever left the clubhouse or not, it's not exactly the type of thing you want the world to know about.

All of this was done after a recent poll by Sports Illustrated in which Major League players were asked anonymously which manager in baseball they would least like to play for, and which one they'd most like to play for. Guess which one Sweet Lou emerged "victorious" in.

Sadly, it's not an incredibly uncommon occurrence for some loser, who has nothing better to do in their life, to create faux Myspace, Facebook or Twitter accounts of public figures. Why in God's name someone would ever waste their own personal time to do this is absolutely beyond me, but it happens. Something else that happens frequently these days: lawsuits.

Thus, it was probably inevitable we'd see the two happenstances collide. Recently, the sports world helped make it happen. Tony La Russa, the revolutionary manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, is suing Twitter because some low-life started a Tony La Russa Twitter page. His grounds are on trademark infringement and "dilution, cybersquatting, and misappropriation of name and likeness."

After a nearly seamless start to the season, the St. Louis Cardinals are all-of-a-sudden reeling. Tuesday night, they lost 7-1 to the hapless Pirates, but that likely wasn't the worst occurrence. A single game in a season of 162 isn't a really huge deal, after all. Losing your power-hitting protection for Albert Pujols, however, is.

Ryan Ludwick gave chase to a ball off the bat of Nyjer Morgan early in the game and came up lame with a strained right hamstring. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony LaRussa anticipates the Cardinals will have to put Ludwick on the disabled list -- where he'd join fellow starting outfielder Rick Ankiel.

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.

Last Sunday, Alfonso Soriano was hit in the head by a pitch off the hand of Cardinals starter Todd Wellemeyer. Later in the game, Cubs starting pitcher Rich Harden hit Albert Pujols in the middle of the back. It was a fastball, and it was on the first pitch of the at-bat. There was no one on base, and the Cubs had a big lead. Translation: Pujols was hit by Harden in retaliation for Soriano's beaning.

Monday, Ryan Braun was apparently dotted on purpose by Jeff Karstens of the Pirates, but the Brewers didn't get a chance to retaliate, because the umpiring crew offered an immediate warning to both benches.

Fresh off losing consecutive heart-breaking games to his division rival, Tony LaRussa has a little bit of whining to do about the baby bears from the north. You see, it's been a few days since LaRussa himself was in the news, so he was probably getting a bit antsy. The on-field play of an exciting series should never overshadow the self-anointed wizard of baseball, after all.

Let us set the scene. Milton Bradley struck out looking on a questionable-at-best call Thursday with the bases loaded. He got thrown out of the game, and has since been slapped with a two-game suspension.

There's no doubt that the St. Louis Cardinals and their fans had their fingers crossed this season that Chris Carpenter would be able to get through an entire season healthy after missing most of the last two seasons. After seeing the way he pitched in his first start of the season, they probably broke those fingers for them being crossed so hard. Of course their hopes came to an end when Carpenter was placed on the disabled list on Wednesday.

Now the question becomes how much time is Carpenter going to miss because of his strained rib cage. Well, if you ask Carpenter's manager Tony La Russa, he'll tell you that you shouldn't hold your breath. La Russa thinks Carpenter may not be back on the mound until this summer.

As we left Spring Training, everyone was sure Jason Motte was going to be the closer for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2009. He was dominant in the spring, Chris Perez was headed to the minors, and Tony LaRussa even named him the closer. After four games, we already have reason to be skeptical.

Motte got his first big-league save opportunity on Opening Day, but he promptly blew it ... to the Pirates. After a Freddy Sanchez double, he got two consecutive outs before completely unraveling. Single, double, hit by pitch and double, and you have 4 runs on 4 hits -- and a blown save.

Now that the other giant picture of Albert Pujols has fallen back several pages, it is safe for me to repost this classic photo depicting Albert appropriating both the George Gervin finger roll and Michael Jordan tongue wag. Is there anything this man can't do? No, there isn't. I mean, unless "having an acurate birth certificate" is a thing.

Last year's Spring Training Dugout for the Cardinals caused a bit of controversy when I chose to be preachy and somewhat dated instead of doing what I usually do, which is "read comic books, then write off the top of my head." I assure you, the problem has been remedied.

Today's Spring Dugz Dugout is after the jump.