(Photo by Keith Allison/flickr)

Renaissance man, gladiator, and all-around fanstastic individual was supposed to be with the team in Houston, but now, maybe he won’t be? We’ve had Joey’s return date put off once already. It’s not that big a deal, except that I’m crazy and paranoid. I mean, the publicly available evidence could support either that something is terribly wrong and they’re hiding it from us (unlikely), or that Joey and the team are being very cautious about their giant investment/physical well- being.

I thought at first, that it might be a translation problem around Labor day. We all know Canadians are weird, I mean, they spell it “Labour Day”. Who knows what’s going on there. But Canadian Labour Day and American Labor Day happen on the same first Monday in September.

Of course, it’s nice that we have great, big 9.5 game lead. It’s very sweet of the Pirates and Cardinals to do our job for us and lose while we get through this Joey Votto-less period. Until Joey comes back, we just have to enjoy the excitement of Didi Gregorius (Hurrah, defense!) and Henry Rodriguez (El Pollito!), and the somewhat less intense emotion of the return of Logan Ondrusek and Devin Mesoraco.