Category Archives: Football

Happy Sestercentennial, Thanks IKEA

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The Saint Louis Arch

The Saint Louis Arch

Saint Louis was founded by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau on February 15, 1764. That will make next year, Saint Louis’s 250th anniversary. The City of Saint Louis will begin celebrating this anniversary on New Year’s Eve and continue with festivities throughout 2014. This is good news, but anyone could have seen this party coming. In a bit of a surprise, city Mayor Slay announced today that IKEA will build a store in town. The store will be located near Vandeventer and Forest Park Avenues, southwest of SLU. Groundbreaking is scheduled for next summer, with the store opening in the fall of 2015. This news will act as a great salve to our hurt feeling, because we all knew here that Kansas City’s IKEA will open next year. Many other metropolitan areas have been enjoying their IKEA for years. I’m just glad that we’ll finally be getting ours, even if it will have taken 251 years to get here.

The placement of this IKEA store in our urban core is a bit of a departure from their usual business model. Normally, IKEA stores are placed in the suburbs. This difference didn’t go without complaint from some of my more white bread colleagues. Some scoffed at Mr. Slay’s assertion that this store marks a turnaround of the flight of jobs and people from the city. Their derision probably prevented them from hearing the mayor’s enumeration of other store chains that will also be setting up shop in town, Whole Foods and Lululemon to name a few. I fled their company, in order to hang out with the cool kids. They were nice to me today, even though I brought ‘tidings of great joy’. Their take on the store’s location was totally different, because they live within five miles of that spot. One of them, a Michigan grad, even offered that they had softened up Ohio State for me. I hope that this is true. Eventually, we all agreed that win or lose, Michigan State is almost certain to go to the Rose Bowl. It’s a BCS thing.

Cardinal Colors

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Cardinal Colors

Cardinal Colors

Our new red maple is quickly coming into Cardinal’s colors. When we got this tree, I never thought about the juxtaposition of its natural fall colors with post-season baseball in Saint Louis, but they make a beautiful combination. The last of the three silver maples on the parking strip that came with the house still hangs over it, but is also showing its age. I await the inevitable green dot on its trunk, its mark of death, the mark of the city forester. It’s his tree, as he will tell gladly you. The parking strip is city land. Only pleading stayed its execution years ago, but now I think that its time is nigh. But let not its expected passing grieve you too much, because it has lived a long life and its heir is apparent.

We never did get on our bikes this weekend. Although, we did make it out and walk about a bit. After Anne’s monthly vigil we broke fast at Stratton’s in Clayton. After returning home, we ventured out again, to get our haircuts and also do a shopping at the grocery store. It has been a fair day, a gloriously lazy Sunday, so there is not much more left to report, except that this has been an amazingly successful sports weekend for Saint Louis, Cardinals (twice), Blues and Rams. Saint Louis has given Dave the best birthday present he could hope for.

My Vince Lombardi Moment

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My Vince Lombardi moment is really more my Mom’s rather than mine. Vince Lombardi was the legendary football coach of the Green Bay Packers. The National Football League’s Super Bowl trophy is named in his honor. In 1969, Lombardi, a devout Catholic moved to the Washington D.C. area to coach the Redskins. He ended up joining our parish.

One Sunday morning, as usual, we were running a little late. Mass was about to start and it was crowded. The only empty seats were in a pew, almost to the front. Sitting on the aisle, in this nearly empty pew was an older couple. This was Lombardi and his wife. I don’t think that my Mom knew who he was, as if that would have mattered, she asked him to move over. He grudgingly slid his butt down the pew, a bit. My Mom insisted again and he move some more and he eventually moved over enough for the five of us to squeeze in there. I knew who he was and was as mortified as a 15 year-old could be. He died a year later. In retrospect, maybe Mom was just trying to help him move on closer to God.

Finally, the day of the big game has arrived, Super Bowl Sunday. For the record, I will be rooting for the Packers. The Packers are the unofficial Yooper team, don’t you know? They will be playing the Pittsburgh Steelers and the game will be held in Arlington, TX, my folk’s home for many years. I explain all of this, because even though the Super Bowl is great spectacle and almost an American holiday, its viewership is “only” about 100 million, which means that most Americans don’t watch the game.

I’ve laid out the basics here, the who, what and where of Super Bowl XLV (that would be 45), so that all my readers will be prepared on Monday morning, during the inevitable postmortem discussions around water cooler. But, now it is time to delve into the details. I’m not speaking about the football, the game hasn’t even been played yet; no, I’m speaking of the commercials, the other part of the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is annoying in this respect. It is a TV show that you can’t afford to breakaway from during the commercials, because the commercials are part of the show. During the first Super Bowl, it cost advertisers $42,500 for a thirty-second spot. This year the cost is $3 million. Most advertisers secret their ads until their big moment, but more and more advertisers are beginning to socialize their wares before the big game.

This Volkswagen-Darth Vader spot is a choice one. You don’t know the power of the dark side of the Force. The other venue for advertisers is the banned Super Bowl ad route. This approach allows more creative freedom, alleviates the $3 million cost and can garner comparable exposure via YouTube and the web. I’ll not going to share any heavy Peta ads here (sorry guys), but this E-trade baby medley is relatively tame.

So considered yourself educated about this Super Bowl. Go forth and don’t watch the game. I’ve got you covered. Get out, go shopping, do something else. But know this, I will be watching, not you, the game. Try not to forget checking out the Monday morning news to see who wins. Remember it is the Packers versus the Steelers and you’ll do fine.

Fool’s Ball

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Dave, Anne and I went to go see the fool’s-ball game at the Jones Dome on Sunday.  Dan is no fool, so he eschewed the whole thing.  We took the Metro downtown, so there were no hassles with parking and also no danger of towing.  Besides we met some nice people along the way.  There was the man with the little boy.  The boy wasn’t his son, but the man was friends with the mom and was taking the little boy to the game.  The boy was cold, waiting for the train.  An elderly woman overheard this and showed us how to turn on the overhead heat lamps.  That seemed to help, anyway the train was warm.

We arrived on time, but had to wait at the will call window and missed the Rams’ first touchdown.  The seats were decent, so we settled into watch the game, I with my camera, Anne with her knitting and Dave with his Rams’ jersey on.  I’ll cut to the chase, the Rams won, 25-17.  This win keeps the Rams in the running for a payoff birth, while the San Francisco 49ers’ loss eliminates them from contention.  The opportunity to trash-talk my two Californian brothers about this victory, will be savored.

Next week the Rams face the Seattle Seahawks.  The possibility to further extend my intra-family fool’s-ball rivalries to the in-laws has not escaped my attention.  The winner of that game will represent the NFC West in the playoffs.  If the Rams win next week they will finish the regular season with a .500 record, an even number of wins and losses, but if the Seahawks win then they will be the first un-asterisked NFL team with a losing record to go to the playoffs.  The playoffs are not for losers!  That makes the Rams the last line of defense and the final protector of the NFL’s sacred honor.

America expects that every Ram will do his duty.

2 Minute Drill

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Last weekend was a pretty good football weekend here in the RegenAxe household.  Starting on Friday night, Maplewood-Richmond Heights beat Carnahan 70-6.  Dan and Dave graduated high school from Maplewood and Anne continues to teach there.  Carnahan is a relatively new charter school, named for former Missouri governor, Mel Carnahan.  Mel Carnahan is also remembered as the dead man who beat John Ashcroft.  Carnahan died just weeks before the 2000 election, but with his name still on the ballot, he was elected.  His widow was appointed to serve his term.  Maplewood is now ranked number two in the state’s small school category.

On Saturday, Michigan State beat Illinois 26-6 in East Lansing.  Although the first half seemed conflicted, the second half was all MSU.  Adding icing to this Big Ten victory was Ohio State’s defeat.  They fell to Wisconsin.   Michigan also lost (again), but there is no need to pile it on, right?  Most of the challenging opponents that MSU has this year, have already been faced.  Michigan State and Ohio State are not scheduled to meet this year, at least not in regular season play.  Can you say Big Ten Champions?  Not yet?  How about now?  Now?

Finally on Sunday, the Saint Louis Rams overcame the San Diego Chargers, 20-17.  Sorry Ski.  No, not really.  The Rams have surprised Saint Louis this year, they’re actually winning.  Monday morning, I overheard a discussion between Aaron, the Starbucks barista, and one of his more sports savvy customers; they were parsing the Ram’s chances for the rest of the season.  This was a conversation that wouldn’t have happened a year ago, or even three weeks ago.

In football parlance the two-minute drill is what the losing team does around about the time that the two-minute warning whistle is blown at the end of a half.  They’ll use a variety of tactics like, the hurry-up offence and sideline passes, all designed to squeeze as much time out of the clock as is possible.  This election cycle has two more weeks to go, not just two more minutes.  But, if you consider that this election cycle began on November, 5th, 2008, the day after Barack Obama was elected president, then a two-year election cycle telescopes these last 2 weeks into the last 2 minutes of this political football game. 

The Democrats are down in the polls and certainly have more to lose than the Republicans, but I think that it is we the people, who have the most to lose.  The dominant issue for this election cycle is the economy, by which I mean jobs.  Many people in this country are out of work, but many more people fear for their jobs.  Overlaying this election cycle, with its political issues was the Supreme Court’s ruling that free speech = money.  This ruling has allowed corporations to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into the electoral process all with the motive of buying this election.

Switching back to the sports paradigm, our two predominant national sports are baseball and football.  Baseball has settled upon a system that has allowed the Yankees to buy their pennant for about a quarter of the time over the last one-hundred years.  Conversely, football has their draft, which regularly turns over the winning and losing teams.  How about those Saint Louis Rams?  I fear that our country is moving from a world where one man person = one vote to a world where one dollar = one vote.  I pray that the American public shows the gridiron grit to prevent this.  Should we just punt or go for the Hail Mary?

In addition to the picture of this year’s crop of political yard signs, I have also included a photograph of the vintage cycling poster for Les Cycles Wonder or Wonder Bicycles.  They are fast and flexible, sont souples et rapides.  The photo was taken at the City Diner, a great Saint Louis greasy spoon, that features all sorts of eclectic artworks.  This poster is for my bike buddies.