As 2009 draws to a close it’s been butt kiss de rigueur for Cardinal fans to tout how wildly successful the 00’s were for the team.  In fairness, and most likely further removed and more engaged in retrospect, the aughts will be considered a notable, but not the MOST notable,  10 year period of excellence for a franchise that has had several stellar decades. 

The 1990’s, however were pretty much an abortion.

The only time the team finished above third place in their division (NL Central or NL East) was 1996. A year in which I got my learner permit and subsequently a driver’s license and spent less time watching baseball than any other summer before or since. The great lion’s share of my transition from child into man was spent watching shitty players play shitty baseball for a franchise willing to live off its success from the 1980’s and do little else.

That is until the Cardinals got Mark McGwire.

True story: The day Big Mac got his first home run for the Cardinals, I was a junior in high school. The Rams were having a pre-season game and my buddies dad gave us tickets because even in the 90’s people hated pre-season NFL games. We gave a bum 10 bucks to buy us beer and we got pretty hammered before going into the then TWA dome and just before we hit our seats some since layed-off KMOV reporter jammed a microphone in our faces and told us the news… Big Mac had gone yard for the first time as a Cardinal.

“It’s about fucking time!” my buddy deadpanned into the camera before walking off.

(Side: To KMOV’s credit, we did see ourselves on the 10p newscast, just with the audio muted and the weekend anchor babbling over us. Side II: the seats we had were so close to the field, the jumbotron TV guy filmed us since we were the only ones going wild at a pre-season game.  My parents, who were there, saw us and came down our seats to ask us if we were drunk. We lied. Side III:  The next year I would miss HR’s 69 & 70 because I chose to go to a Rams game instead of the last game of the season.  The moral of the story? The Rams keep fucking me.)

Mark McGwire’s arrival in 1997 and then his record breaking 1998 season was exciting. Perhaps now, depending on your views on steroids, it’s a little tainted. Perhaps it's not. But don’t tell me you weren’t riveted to the TV every single one of his at bats. Cardinals baseball was exciting as hell. And because we as a fan base were so tired of being right around .500 with nothing to show for it for 9/10th of the decade… Big Mac seemed like a messiah. Sent to make St. Louis relevant again in baseball.

Since his abrupt retirement in 2001, McGwire has been rarely seen in public. 2 times to be exact. Once in front of Congress and once to celebrate Busch II's demise. Yet he's never remained un-fascinating. He's pretty much everything that Cardinal fans can talk about this week. Joe Thurston could kill a hooker by throwing her off the top of the Arch and Kevin Slaten wouldn't spend 30 seconds on it.

Personally, I love the hire. But not because Big Mac is going to be a great coach. He might be- he might not be. But because I think he's going to bring the mental discipline on this entire team up about 15 notches. Remember, this dude turned down 20 million dollars plus from the Cardinals in 2001. He's resisted every urge to make a dime or even speak about his career or the Hall of Fame to anyone. Hell, he might have embarrassed St. Louis in front of Congress... but they didn't crack him. He's going to come to St. Louis. He's going to make buddies with the team. The team is going to see how a few guys like the aforementioned Slaten treat McGwire and it's going to galvanize these guys into 25 guys against everybody.

Championship teams need that edge; they desperately need somebody to slight them in real or perceived ways. The vocal minority in St. Louis that despises McGwire is going to give the fuel that fires up the 2010 Cardinals.

Now that doesn't necessarily translate into wins on the field, but it can't hurt. I'm probably partial to Mark McGwire because for those of us in our late 20's and early 30's he was the first superstar we saw at the height of his powers. He was the guy we could brag on wherever we went.

He went away for a while and Albert has filled his shoes quite nicely. Still. It's nice to see that McDonald's wasn't totally stupid for sponsoring that section of seats the past 8 years.


Aaron Hooks is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report, Managing Editor for Cards Diaspora and writes every Friday for InsideSTL. Follow him on Twitter.