Though their MVP-winning shortstop has predicted 100 wins this season, sadly the Phils' season is over. And not because they wasted a great effort by their actual number one pitcher Cole Hamels and lost 1-0 tonight. It was over after the opener really.

The Phils lost 11-6 thanks to a ninth-inning meltdown by putative closer Tom Gordon. While Gordon was inexplicable left in to receive his drubbing, the Phils crossed a line that history indicates is hard to overcome.

Only a handful of teams have given up at least eleven runs in their season opener and then gone on to make the playoffs, the last being the '06 A's. Only six teams allowed 11 at home in their opener—as the Phils did—and made the playoffs. And only one (the 1969 Miracle Mets) won one hundred games. So much for preseason predictions.

Here are the only teams to make the postseason after allowing 11 in their first game:

The average winning percentage of a team that allowed more runs in their season opener is .466, which translates into a 75-97 record.

This is a team that historically likes to dig as deep a hole as possible at the beginning of the season. With Flash's help they may have dug themselves a tunnel on opening day.

By the way, if anyone is trying to plumb the depths of the hypocrisy and self-serving that the steroids issues has been to politicians, forget the highly partisan Roger Clemens circus and look no further than this little item. God bless Mr. Roorda. I'm sure the Cards appreciate his patronage:

NEWS RELEASE

March 31, 2008

Missouri lawmaker takes on Major League Baseball

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – As Major League Baseball and its Player's Association discuss a new drug testing policy, Missouri State Representative Jeff Roorda has filed legislation to let the MLB know what he thinks the new standards should be.

He filed legislation today that would prohibit state tax credits from going to professional sports teams in a league that does not place at least a one-year ban on athletes who test positive for anabolic steroids.

MLB's current policy calls for such a ban only after the fourth failed test. Roorda's legislation would call on professional sports league to place such a ban on a player after the first violation.

"Since when in baseball is it four strikes and you're out?" Roorda, D-Barnhart, said. "What major league baseball and all professional sports leagues need are for their executives to step forward and take a strong stand to end the scandal of the steroid era. What we need is a modern-day Kenesaw Mountain Landis," Roorda added, referring to the legendary baseball commissioner who exiled the Chicago Black Sox in 1920 and sent a powerful message to all of Major League Baseball that gambling would not be tolerated.

Roorda, a rabid Cardinal fan, says he has been discouraged by some of the bruises recent scandals have left on the game. "Baseball is the most purely American game in all of sports. This is the game that, as a child, I would listen to on the radio and read about in books and play with friends on the corner lot. It is a sport that has produced countless heroes but today produces one scandal after another. Don't our kids deserve heroes too?"

Roorda says the time for action is now. "As a lawmaker, one of our most effective tools for righting wrongs is the use of economic incentives and disincentives," Roorda said. "As a state lawmaker, this sort of legislation is the only way I can send a message to the national sports leagues that have allowed steroids to become such a problem."

The bill, HB2502, was filed the same day as the St. Louis Cardinals' season opener, which Roorda will be attending this afternoon.