This Tuesday night drama comes after Cincinnati’s Brandon Phillips said this about the St. Louis Cardinals:

“I’d play against these guys with one leg. We have to beat these guys. I hate the Cardinals. All they do is bitch and moan about everything, all of them, they’re little bitches, all of ‘em.

“I really hate the Cardinals. Compared to the Cardinals, I love the Chicago Cubs. Let me make this clear: I hate the Cardinals.”

Somehow I doubt this war is over.  And I’m a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan.  So Brandon Phillips can suck a big fat one.  I guess being a loser your entire career can make you a bitter sack of shit.

Cardinals and Reds Brawl in Cincinnati is a post from: The Baseball Chick - Baseball News, Updates, Fantasy Advice, Rumors & Gossip

According to Wired Science:

Individuals who inherit a particular gene variant that tweaks the brain’s reward system are especially likely to drink a lot of alcohol in the company of heavy-boozing peers.

That’s the preliminary indication of a new study directed by psychology graduate student Helle Larsen of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Adults carrying at least one copy of a long version of the dopamine D4 receptor gene, dubbed DRD4, imbibed substantially more alcohol around a heavy-drinking peer than did others who lacked that gene variant, Larsen’s group reports in a paper published online July 7 in Psychological Science.

“Carriers of the long gene may be more attuned to, and influenced by, another person’s heavy drinking than noncarriers are,” Larsen says.

Her study provides the first evidence that a gene influences human alcohol use in social situations.

Scientists have yet to decipher the precise brain effects of DRD4’s long form. Larsen hypothesizes that in the presence of heavy drinkers, the gene variant may increase dopamine activity in brain areas that amplify alcohol’s appeal as a rewarding social activity.

“If this gene-environment interaction stands, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t, there is every reason to expect the effect would extend to drugs besides alcohol, as well to many motivated pursuits,” remarks biopsychologist Kent Berridge of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was not involved with the new study.

Sociologist Michael Shanahan of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill lauds the new study for ruling out the possibility that carriers of the key gene simply like to drink a lot of booze and tend to do so with other heavy drinkers. Instead, alcohol use jumped among volunteers with a long DRD4 gene who happened to see a stranger imbibe heavily for a brief time.

Larsen and her colleagues asked 60 women and 53 men to evaluate advertisements for an alcohol-abuse prevention campaign. Each volunteer entered a room that had been furnished as a typical Dutch pub, accompanied by a person of the same sex who the volunteer thought was another participant but who was actually working with the researchers.

In between two 10-minute evaluation sessions, volunteers and the researchers’ confederates were given a break. An experimenter asked them to sit at a bar stocked with peanuts, beer, wine, soda and mineral water and to drink whatever they wanted.

As instructed, confederates took the initiative and drank either two sodas, one alcoholic drink and then one soda; or three alcoholic drinks for women and four alcoholic drinks for men over a 30-minute period.

DNA analyses of saliva identified 31 volunteers as carriers of the long DRD4 gene, which contains an amino acid sequence that repeats seven times.

When confederates stuck to sodas or drank one alcoholic beverage, long-gene carriers and noncarriers alike limited themselves to an average of less than half a glass of wine or half a bottle of beer.

When confederates quaffed multiple alcoholic drinks, carriers of the gene variant consumed an average of almost two wine or beer servings, versus almost one serving for noncarriers.

These results held for men and women, all of whom said they drink socially, regardless of how much alcohol they reported drinking weekly.

Deceptive research techniques can backfire if volunteers see through them and don’t admit it to researchers (SN: 6/20/98, p. 394). But when interviewed after testing, none of the participants guessed the study’s real aim or the confederate’s agenda.

Other researchers need to confirm these findings, Larsen says. Some attempts to replicate findings from other studies of gene-environment interactions have yielded mixed results, including follow-up work on a study by researchers from Duke University in Durham, N.C., that found that another gene variant promotes depression in people who experience stress.

Thanks, dopamine D4 receptor gene!!! And cheers!

Good News: My Drinking Problem Is YOUR Fault! is a post from: The Baseball Chick - Baseball News, Updates, Fantasy Advice, Rumors & Gossip

(Dumbass No. 1 To Run On Field)

(Dumbass No. 2 On Field The Following Night)

There were incidents on consecutive nights in Philadelphia during the home series against the St. Louis Cardinals this week wherein two high-IQed individuals ran onto the field while the Cardinals were at-bat.  The first was 17 years old, and the second was seven months pregnant and clearly very hungry.  Forget tasering these people, has anyone considered waterboarding?

ITS OFFICIALLY OFFICAL: Phillies Fans Are Most Definitely Degenerates is a post from: The Baseball Chick - Baseball News, Updates, Fantasy Advice, Rumors & Gossip

Since Mark McGwire is coming back to baseball this year as the new hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, it is clear he wanted to get something of his voluptuous steroid-induced man-tittays.

According to Mr. McGwire’s own admission, he used steroids on and off throughout the 90s, including during his record-breaking home run season.  I haven’t been this shocked since I found out Freddie Mercury was gay.

“It’s time for me to talk about the past and to confirm what people have suspected. I used steroids during my playing career and I apologize,” McGwire said in a statement released through the Cardinals. “I wish I had never touched steroids. It was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroids era.”

Of course this will be of minor benefit to the St. Louis Cardinals, as McGwire’s continued silence would have made it difficult for him to work productively with Holliday and the other Cardinals hitters without heavy skepticism.

McGwire somewhat defended himself by stating that his usage came with the desire to recover quickly from injuries and not as a means of cheating.  That’s crazy, because I could have sworn he did all those ‘roids because he hated having testicles.  I know I would.

Mark McGwire Did Steriods… AND I JIZZED IN MY PANTS. is a post from: The Baseball Chick - Baseball News, Updates, Fantasy Advice, Rumors & Gossip

MIND FREAK!!!!  Clint Barmes made like Criss Angel on Sunday with some straight rock-n-roll ninja magic.  The above photo taken by a fan at the game seems to show that Barmes did not make the catch which basically won the game for the Rockies, thereby helping to preserve their small lead in the NL Wild Card race over the Atlanta Braves.

Though the second baseman was able to turn the over-the-shoulder barrel-roll grab into a game-ending double play, a series of photos published by Rockies fan Craig Welling later that night contains one picture where it appears the ball hits the ground.

Think fans of the fast-charging Braves or the homefield-chasing Cardinals are interested in this evidence? If the ball is ruled a drop, Julio Lugo would have scored the tying run and the Cardinals would have had runners at the corners with one out. However, the Rockies would have had one more chance at the plate, so it’s not as if we can definitively say that St. Louis would have won the game and Atlanta would have crept another game closer in the NL wild card standings.  (Yahoo! Sports)

Commenting on the catch, gay pirate Ryan Spilborghs told the Denver Post:

Only me and Barmes know the truth…. It’s better that it’s (mysterious).

I guess Ryan thinks it’s better for the public to question the validity of the Rockies’ wins and resultant postseason berth.  Dumbass.

Clint Barmes’ Not-So Game-Winning Catch is a post from: The Baseball Chick - Baseball News, Updates, Fantasy Advice, Rumors & Gossip

A sobering change of pace for me. I promise this will be the last time I don’t swear in a post.

Jack Buck’s 9/11 Poem is a post from: The Baseball Chick - Baseball News, Updates, Fantasy Advice, Rumors & Gossip