A Shot at Redemption
Penny and I ate more Chinese food and watched shortstop David Eckstein put the St. Louis Cardinals up 5-4 in the eighth inning. The Cardinals now lead the Detroit Tigers 3-1 in the World Series. I won't give much more of a summary of the game than that. Either you saw the game or you didn't, and it will be reported in all of the newspapers and all of the sports shows, and I won't do a better job than that.
I've been a Cardinals fan since 1985, when they gave me the experience of a hometown team going to the World Series, something I'd never expected to happen in my lifetime, and the Redbirds have had my loyalty in gratitude ever since. That may sound a little odd, but I grew up in Cleveland, where I spent the first 18 years of my life.
Baseball is the first sport to which I was able to learn the rules, perhaps because the game is slow enough for a 5-year-old to pick up the rules, if not the subtleties of the game. My father was never all that patient about much with me, but he was patient about explaining that game to me. He was a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan, and year after year, they broke his heart. We went down to Memorial Stadium on the lakefront (which is no more) on many a weekend afternoon, back when general admission was $3 and a bargain even in 1960s dollars, and mostly, we watched the Indians lose. Most years, the Indians ended the season in the cellar of the American League or very close to it.
My dad was an eternal pessimist about the Indians. Whenever Rocky Colavito or some other Indian slugger came to bat, he was always going to strike out, or maybe if we're lucky, we'd get to watch the poor bastard lob a long one into left field and into the waiting glove of an opposing left fielder. Then, if the guy actually singled or even knocked it over the fence, my father would act more surprised than the Polish Army in 1939. I didn't care. As a kid, I especially liked the fireworks they shot off whenver the Indians scored a home run.
But I always experienced baseball from the perspective of an eternal loser. Then, in 1984, after seven years of newspapering in Michigan, I moved to St. Louis to take a job with a public relations firm, flacking for Monsanto's Lasso herbicide and Ford mid-sized trucks. Mostly I hung out with the local science fiction club, and most of them had a secondary passion for Cardinals baseball.
And lo and behold, the very next year, the Cardinals went to the World Series.
Not that I actually went to Busch Stadium. Then as now, World Series tickets were next to impossible to get. You either had to be a celebrity, or you had to grab a sleeping bag and camp out next to the stadium from the moment they announced the winner in the National League Championship Series, along with 10,000 other people who had the same idea that you did. I had no desire to do that -- true, I'd grown up with the Cleveland Indians, but I wasn't that much of a glutton for punishment.
But my friends and I laid in a very large supply of beer and soda and heinous snack foods and held game watching parties every night of that series. And we watched the Cardinals run up a 3-1 game lead over the Kansas City Royals, just like they hold a 3-1 lead over the Tigers tonight.
Then something weird happened. The Royals woke up from a state of zombiehood and won their second game. Then, in game six, the Cardinals were set to clinch the Series with two out in the bottom of the ninth, when a bad call at first base kept the Royals in the game when they should have been sent packing. Safe instead of out. We knew it was a bad call, because the network showed replays of the incident over and over, and the announcers all said the umpire had made a bad call. The Royals went on to win the game and tie the series up 3-3.
The Cardinals were completely demoralized. At game 7 the following night in Kansas City, they looked like some sandlot little leaguers. I don't recall if they scored any runs, but the Royals scored 15. At the end of the game, the Cardinals' star pitcher stormed into the locker room and permanently injured his throwing hand by punching out an oscillating fan.
No city had been this devastated since the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Of course, some local radio talk show host gave out the home phone number of that schmuck of an umpire, and last I heard, he and his family were still in hiding somewhere on the Kamchatka Peninsula. I thought that was overkill myself -- Cardinals fans could have left it at tying firecrackers to the alternator wires of his Ford Pinto.
But as bad as that loss was, the Cardinals gave me the experience of a World Series in my adopted home town (at least until I got laid off later in the fall), and I remained a loyal fan ever since. My dad never could understand how I could change loyalties like that, even if those bums at Memorial Stadium couldn't hit or pitch their way out of a paper sack. (Perhaps he was vindicated when the Indians went to the World Series some years later, for the first time since Christ was a corporal.)
So now, 21 years later, the Cardinals sit 3-1 over the Tigers. They have a shot at redemption, and if they can pull of a win in game 5 tomorrow night, they'll even win a World Series the first year in their nice new stadium. I'll probably break out the merlot for the game.
My father died in March 1997 just short of his 67th birthday. His body wore a Cleveland Indians baseball cap in the casket, and they buried him that way. Some people are just eternal fans, win or lose.
I've been a Cardinals fan since 1985, when they gave me the experience of a hometown team going to the World Series, something I'd never expected to happen in my lifetime, and the Redbirds have had my loyalty in gratitude ever since. That may sound a little odd, but I grew up in Cleveland, where I spent the first 18 years of my life.
Baseball is the first sport to which I was able to learn the rules, perhaps because the game is slow enough for a 5-year-old to pick up the rules, if not the subtleties of the game. My father was never all that patient about much with me, but he was patient about explaining that game to me. He was a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan, and year after year, they broke his heart. We went down to Memorial Stadium on the lakefront (which is no more) on many a weekend afternoon, back when general admission was $3 and a bargain even in 1960s dollars, and mostly, we watched the Indians lose. Most years, the Indians ended the season in the cellar of the American League or very close to it.
My dad was an eternal pessimist about the Indians. Whenever Rocky Colavito or some other Indian slugger came to bat, he was always going to strike out, or maybe if we're lucky, we'd get to watch the poor bastard lob a long one into left field and into the waiting glove of an opposing left fielder. Then, if the guy actually singled or even knocked it over the fence, my father would act more surprised than the Polish Army in 1939. I didn't care. As a kid, I especially liked the fireworks they shot off whenver the Indians scored a home run.
But I always experienced baseball from the perspective of an eternal loser. Then, in 1984, after seven years of newspapering in Michigan, I moved to St. Louis to take a job with a public relations firm, flacking for Monsanto's Lasso herbicide and Ford mid-sized trucks. Mostly I hung out with the local science fiction club, and most of them had a secondary passion for Cardinals baseball.
And lo and behold, the very next year, the Cardinals went to the World Series.
Not that I actually went to Busch Stadium. Then as now, World Series tickets were next to impossible to get. You either had to be a celebrity, or you had to grab a sleeping bag and camp out next to the stadium from the moment they announced the winner in the National League Championship Series, along with 10,000 other people who had the same idea that you did. I had no desire to do that -- true, I'd grown up with the Cleveland Indians, but I wasn't that much of a glutton for punishment.
But my friends and I laid in a very large supply of beer and soda and heinous snack foods and held game watching parties every night of that series. And we watched the Cardinals run up a 3-1 game lead over the Kansas City Royals, just like they hold a 3-1 lead over the Tigers tonight.
Then something weird happened. The Royals woke up from a state of zombiehood and won their second game. Then, in game six, the Cardinals were set to clinch the Series with two out in the bottom of the ninth, when a bad call at first base kept the Royals in the game when they should have been sent packing. Safe instead of out. We knew it was a bad call, because the network showed replays of the incident over and over, and the announcers all said the umpire had made a bad call. The Royals went on to win the game and tie the series up 3-3.
The Cardinals were completely demoralized. At game 7 the following night in Kansas City, they looked like some sandlot little leaguers. I don't recall if they scored any runs, but the Royals scored 15. At the end of the game, the Cardinals' star pitcher stormed into the locker room and permanently injured his throwing hand by punching out an oscillating fan.
No city had been this devastated since the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Of course, some local radio talk show host gave out the home phone number of that schmuck of an umpire, and last I heard, he and his family were still in hiding somewhere on the Kamchatka Peninsula. I thought that was overkill myself -- Cardinals fans could have left it at tying firecrackers to the alternator wires of his Ford Pinto.
But as bad as that loss was, the Cardinals gave me the experience of a World Series in my adopted home town (at least until I got laid off later in the fall), and I remained a loyal fan ever since. My dad never could understand how I could change loyalties like that, even if those bums at Memorial Stadium couldn't hit or pitch their way out of a paper sack. (Perhaps he was vindicated when the Indians went to the World Series some years later, for the first time since Christ was a corporal.)
So now, 21 years later, the Cardinals sit 3-1 over the Tigers. They have a shot at redemption, and if they can pull of a win in game 5 tomorrow night, they'll even win a World Series the first year in their nice new stadium. I'll probably break out the merlot for the game.
My father died in March 1997 just short of his 67th birthday. His body wore a Cleveland Indians baseball cap in the casket, and they buried him that way. Some people are just eternal fans, win or lose.
posted by Da Zedman at 9:28 PM
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