Well, we’ve made it to the end of another baseball season. By now you’ve figured out which Cardinal bar serves Red Bull rather than Monster, you’ve learned what the cab ride alone from Busch costs and you know who you can call when your boss dumps two tickets in your lap at 5:30 on a Monday. Soon enough the leaves will turn, the puck will drop and we’ll begin hearing hot stove reports regarding the off season’s biggest free agents. If I enjoyed reading enough or knew how to knit, I’d just assume unplug my television.
It will likely be another cold, dark and uneventful off season. That’s probably what we need. I don’t want to see the words bull and pen next to each other in the same sentence for now, I don’t wanna see Nick Stavinoha hit and I really don’t wanna hear Hrabosky say ‘no pun intended’ followed by awkward silence from McLaughlin.
In hindsight, however, the question still remains; what have we learned from the 2008 season?
Well, by now, you know me to not be one to suffocate you anymore with bleeding heart knock on the front office’s door demanding results type-advocacy. I’m not gonna try to break down our roster for the spring baring injuries, unforeseen acquisitions or loses to the rule five draft. I’m also not gonna try to learn/explain the rule five draft.
Nope, Cards fans have suffered enough in the past few weeks as our team has fallen out of contention and now hover closer to the .500 mark each day. For me to take a stab at what could happen before our boys head to Jupiter in March would be a slap in the face to you, my reader who has clicked-in each Wednesday for the past six months looking for an alternative to baseball blog speak and welcomed me into your homes, offices, or, in the event that you were looking for baseball blog speak, your older brother’s basement.
I hope you have enjoyed the stories, reflections and the weekly journey inside the mind of a rabid St. Louis Cardinals. A Cards fan that, for one season at least, got to write about…well, whatever the hell he wanted to. One that embraces the entire sport like Whitney Houston embraces cocaine abuse and one that still believes watching the inevitable Cubs collapse next month could be just as fun as anything that happened in ’06.
The 2008 season will, by week’s end, become a footnote in the storied history of the club. Whatever happens over the next few nights will be overshadowed by the Rams terribleness, Mizzou’s nearing of Big 12 play and the fact the Blues have unveiled a new jersey nowhere near as bad as that hideous pajama top they mistakenly debuted in front of the public a few years back.
Like a warm Heineken, the 2008 season was not nearly as bad as the sour taste it’s left in your mouth. I know it seems like three years ago now, but at one point we all agreed this year’s bunch was considered a feisty, determined group of overachievers. They withstood too many visits to the disabled list for anyone to remember, inconsistent pitching and a blown save more than once per week to actually remain in the race as September approached. For five months, we were the dude nobody knew that kept showing up at house parties until your girlfriend realized we were the unregistered sex offender her mom had heard about on the news.
Do I still shake my head at the lack of moves we made at the trade deadline while the Cubs and Brewers loaded up for postseason runs? You bet. Is it feasible that we could have made a move and hung with either of those teams down the stretch? Maybe. Do I have any reason to believe the Cubs and Brewers have better front offices and know how to maintain a winning team without mortgaging their future? Absolutely not. Yeah, this is our second straight year without October baseball, but it bears repeating this is the first time since the invention of….I don’t know, the shoe horn, that the Cubs have made the postseason in back-to-back years.
Simply put, the Cards are a team that has proved its return on investment. That, along with the fact that I choose a night at Busch versus The Muny each summer is why I’m a fan. Whether or not the owner’s abuse this status is certainly debatable, we are a part of a fan base that allows our team to be mishandled from time to time without having to fear that the team might move to Las Vegas. While I remind you, the future is less bright in places like New York, Detroit and probably even Milwaukee now, here’s a better suggestion: enjoy the ride.
Enjoy being a Cardinals fan. Enjoy being in a town where taking off work for Opening Day isn’t it a problem, it’s a tradition. Enjoy having enough Bud Selects to get on stage at Paddy O’s, enjoy random Monday nights in July that start at Busch and end up somewhere in an industrial section of Western Illinois, enjoy nine innings with your dad when the game play’s second fiddle to the conversation, enjoy day games that leave you wondering where you parked, who you came with and if you wore to the game what you’re wearing at last call and enjoy reminding visiting fans they’ll never attain anything close to what we have as long as you both live.