With just nine days of regular season baseball remaining, we actually have two very heated wild card races remaining with 6 teams involved. In the American League, the Boston Red Sox have dropped 2 in row to the Tampa Bay Rays and have won just twice in their last 10 games, allowing the New York Yankees to presumably capture the AL East title, while the Rays have snuck up to 2 games back of the Sox for the wild card. Even the Anaheim Angels of Orange County Los Angeles California have taken advantage of the Sox slide and are now 4 games back.

In the National League, barring a New York Mets-esque collapse, the Milwaukee Brewers have the NL Central locked up, but the St. Louis Cardinals have taken advantage of the Atlanta Braves’ struggles and have crept to 3.5 games back in the wild card chase, with San Francisco also 4 games out with an 8-game winning streak. And all of this has been my roundabout way of getting to my favorite quote of this MLB season.

“When I was playing shortstop we were in first place. I know that. It is what it is.”

Can you guess who made this bold claim?

It’s none other than Cardinals error machine Ryan Theriot, who bitched to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that by making an error or two in Spring Training, he had invoked undeserved criticism over his fielding. And he’s totally right to complain. It was quite unfair that people gave him crap for a measly 17 errors in 91 games before he got the boot in favor of Rafael Furcal. Sure, it’s the highest amount of errors he’s ever had in a season in his career, but he certainly doesn’t need to be criticized for it.

People are just jerks.

(Banner via Reuters.)