Cardinals manager Mike Shildt is so outwardly unremarkable, so everyman, so John Q. Public that he could walk up to just about any concession stand in the big leagues, order a ’dog and a cold one and go completely unrecognized.
And that’s in uniform.
Somehow, though, Shildt looked like an even blander, more colorless version of himself as he assessed his team’s chances after three games of the National League Championship Series.
“Hard to win a game if you can’t get a lead,” he said.
Cue the Debbie Downer music.
The NLCS has been an absurd mismatch, with three Nationals starting pitchers — first Anibal Sanchez, then Max Scherzer, then Stephen Strasburg — making the NL Central champs look like a bunch of feckless, slapdash, in-over-their-heads pretenders.