Rejoice!

Posted on December 26, 2011 by RegenAxe

Be Joyce, Be Joyce greatly,
O daughter of Inez
Shout, O daughter of Harry!
Behold thy Name cometh unto thee!
She is the righteous Sister,
and she shall speak not Jay unto the heathen.
– Music by Handel, Lyrics by Pooh & I

I shouldn’t be irreverent, when it comes to other people’s religion. I’m not speaking of Christianity. I still count myself a Christian, no matter what some other people might think, and the above little ditty aside. No, I shouldn’t be irreverent about the Church of Baseball.

Carl wrote me a great letter about Tony LaRussa, the Cardinal Manager that led his team to this year’s World Series championship. It was a nice personal touch, as was the plate. Not that the rest of you didn’t do good too. Don’t you just love my mastery of the colloquial English? Jane’s presents were spot on, except that Dave’s ear buds should have been for me. Thank you Frank and Kathy for the pasta dinner, we will be taking you up on your offer to come visit, next year. Chris, thank you for the gift of wine, it came in handy when Bob, et al visited us last week. Jeremiah was a bullfrog; he was a good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said but I helped him drink his whine. Bubs always buys me the best shirts for work. They never last a year, because I wear them almost every day. To our twin sugar daddies, thank you. I would like to be able to say that we invested or saved wisely your collective presents, instead, we cashed the checks and then threw the money into our new furnace. 😉

“Persephone’s Pomegranate” was our Christmas dinner cooking/art project. See, I helped Anne in the kitchen. The pomegranate seeds were sprinkled in out dinner salad. It is a stop action animation. I made it look like a cartoon to cover-up a focusing issue with the original photography. I think that it turned out pretty well. If you look closely, at the end of the movie, Anne picks six pomegranate seeds out, per Persephone. We were going to have Dan do this, because he lives in La-La land, where six more months of winter is no big deal, but we ate them ourselves. Sorry, northern friends, but the best art is derived from suffering, in this case yours.

A Bruised Cardinal Fan

Posted on November 28, 2011 by RegenAxe

I know my team is the undisputed World Champions, but still the naysayers chatter. Like Al-Qaida terrorist they mutter. They plot their plans for the future. Mutter, chatter and plot all they want, the Saint Louis Cardinals are still the World Champions and will remain so until next year and then maybe even longer, the good Lord willing. Even my dear bro/sis-in-law from Seattle has taken to sniping. Don Denkinger even after two World Championships is still too raw a subject to speak about around these parts. These west coast prejudices only grow worst the further south you go. Why my two brothers could root for the Giants, against the Rangers, last year and then this year roots so fervently for these once disdained Texans against my beloved Cardinals, remains a mystery to me.

What really ruffles this Cardinal fan’s feathers is not the west coast, but that haughty coast to the east. I understand its sense of entitlement, but sorry folks, you just did not have enough to bring to the table this year. This is how I figure it:

Red Sox + Yankees + Braves + Phillies = FAIL

Did I get my math right?

There are snow flurries in the forecast for tonight, but think back to last August 25th. Saint Louis, as usual, had plenty of mercury to spare and the Cardinals were 10 ½ games out of a playoff spot. A month later and only on the last day of the regular season, they squeaked into the playoffs. They had the fewest regular season wins, 90, of any playoff team. The Cards were the National League Wild Card team, in every sense of the meaning. They went on to trail their opponents in all three postseason series, and then came Game 6 of the World Series. The Cardinals were down to their last strike, twice. They eventually won that game and then the series. Love them or hate them, even the most partisan of baseball fan must admit that this year’s Cardinals were the most improbable of champions.

I know that we are the come from behind team, the improbable winners, the underdogs, the small market, Midwest team, but that is what makes the Cardinal’s story this year so great. This reputation is also a little disingenuous. The Cards draw three million in attendance and have done so for decades. Baseball is not all about TV revenues, there still is thing called fan base. Saint Louis is a baseball town. Ask the owner of any other sports franchise in town about that. It was not by accident that the two FOX World Series announcers both have strong Saint Louis connections. Then there is the record book. This was the Cardinal’s eleventh championship, hence, the entire hubbub about 11 in ’11. This year further cements the Cardinal organization’s position as the second most championship winning franchise in history. It also draws us one notch closer on the most winning franchise, those damn Yankees.

The five clay tiles, pictured here, are relief sculptures inlaid into the new Busch Stadium’s outer wall.

Illuminated Autumn Leaves

Posted on October 24, 2011 by RegenAxe

Today was a day for furnace fun. We spoke with the first contractor just after eight. After he left, I did too, off to work I went. That left Anne, home alone, to deal with the onslaught of calls and meetings that lasted the rest of the day. In the end, she met with five different contractors and has meetings with two more tomorrow. She texted me that she now had a headache that was at least by proxy induced by CO. We’ve received proposals from three of the contractors already and have gotten informal estimates from a couple more. Things are moving pretty quickly. We might get a new furnace installed this week. The forecast is for a high in the eighties tomorrow, but on Wednesday they are predicting rain and a big drop in the temperatures. So the race against old man winter is on.

Tonight is another Word Series game night, the last one in Texas. The Series is tied 2-2 after last night, so it is time for the Cardinals to take the Series lead again. Win or lose though the Cards will be back in Saint Louis on Wednesday, when the weather is supposed to turn south again. That is then and this is now, so go Redbirds!

O’ Captain, My Captain!

Posted on October 23, 2011 by RegenAxe

Don, Captain of Team Kaldi’s, called today. How about a bike ride? Sure! He rode over to the house and we both departed towards the Park. Anne, still under the weather, was left to her bike widowhood. We met Marty, another Kaldi’s team member at the Forsyth entrance to the Park and rode with him to the Science Center. Stew and Nancy passed us going the other way, and turned around to say hello. Don and I wended our way back through the Park and stopped at the DeMun Kaldi’s for a little something. I followed him back out Clayton Road to Geyer, before I turned back towards home. All this while, a running dialogue ensued. We tried to solve all of the problems of the world, but decided in the end that if we did that there would be a lot people put out of work. So we left things as they were, sorry world. I took Litzinger Road home, which had even less traffic than Clayton, on a Sunday afternoon. In the end, I got 23 miles to Don’s 40ish.

That was some ballgame last night. I’m speaking of the Card’s game, but I could just as easily be speaking of Michigan State’s Hail Mary ending football victory over the vaunted #3, Wii Badgers. The Cardinals in general and Albert Pujols in particular rocked Arlington, Texas last night, to the tune of 16-7. Saint Louis is just giddy with itself today. History tells us that most teams that find themselves up 2-1 go on to win the World Series. The road team is 21-7 in the last 28 Series when it has broken the tie. This may sound like heresy, but I don’t want the Redbirds to sweep the Rangers in Texas. I want them to come back to Saint Louis to clinch the title. Fox does too. We saw one of their blimps practicing downtown today, while in the Park. It would be nice to see the Cardinals win tonight. After all, the Rams are playing their part as the sacrificial lambs. But like almost every inning played so far, the Cards get out to a lead and the Rangers come right back. I wouldn’t be surprised if tonight’s game reflects this give-and-take and the Rangers tie it up again. Still, go Cards!

Occupy Cooperstown

Posted on October 17, 2011 by RegenAxe

So, the Cards won the pennant and there is joy here in Mudville, but where is the love? MSNBC titled last night’s win, “Cards Win Ugly”. In the body of the article this was mollified with, “Cards Beat Ugly”. There by placing the onus of ugliness not on the winning Cardinals, but rather the losing Brewers, but it might as well have been buried on page thirteen.

I’m so angry that I made a sign!

It is pledge drive week on NPR, so I have taken to listening to podcasts on the way to work. This morning’s show was “Hang Up and Listen”, Slate’s sports gabfest. Dated October 12th, it wasn’t up-to-date enough to cover the series with the Brewers, so it had to contend itself with the division series between the Cardinals and the Phillies. After listening to Stefan Fatsis and his crew, I predict that they will again dwell upon this series, in one week from now.

I won’t believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.

You see folks, for these members of the media elite (OMG, I’m channeling Sarah Palin), when the Phillies lost in game five, the baseball season was over. Kaput! Philadelphia was the last best hope for these effete Easterners. Who cares which one of four, middle market teams, from Flyover-Land, beats the other three.

You know things are messed-up, when librarians start marching!

Through the course of their discussion, they alternately whined that it wasn’t fair that a lesser team, like the 3-2 series winning Cardinals, could knock-off a 100 game season winning team, like the Phillies, but it was fair for big market teams like the Yankees and the Phillies to have huge payrolls. Well, Mr. Fatsis, et al. welcome to the majors! OBTW, Isn’t the current plutocracy the underlying cause of our financial difficulties?

First they ignore, then they laugh, then they fight, then you win.

I probably come across as a Cardinal fan with ruffled feathers, and well I should, because the unkindest cut has come from closest to home. They now live on the Left Coast, but before they use to live in Flyover-Land too. They both graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington, they are both Texas Rangers fans and they are both my brothers. Not since the Civil War has brother been pitted against brother, the North versus the South. That was a battle royal that cleaved this nation’s soul. Can’t we avoid that strife again? Can’t we all just get along? Can’t we have joy in Mudville, again?

Monet Ball

Posted on October 14, 2011 by RegenAxe

OK, I am flummoxed. It is near the witching hour and I have nothing to show so far for today’s blog. I had great plans that I could tell you all about on bended knee, except that it would be better to just tell you all the facts.

Anne and I both worked today.
Anne and I both bicycled (independently) eleven miles today.
Friday night the Saint Louis Art Museum is open late. While the entire museum is dedicated to art and most of it is free to all, as inscribed upon its mantle, except for special exhibits. On Friday, all exhibits are free (see mantle). We went to see the exhibit of Monet’s Agapanthus (Nile water-lily) triptych. In the ’50s Saint Louis and two other American art museums each bought a third of this triptych. Over the years they have been joined together, about once in a generation. This is the third time. More on this to follow.
Tonight brings high culture, food and baseball joy, we watched the Cards beat the Brewers in a sports bar. Coming into a sports bar, especially in the middle of a big game, defines the need for high culture in America’s pastime, Tut, tut, but it is hard to beat fries, fried food, beer and baseball, especially Saint Louis Cardinal baseball.

For all this sound and fury I would have expected a little bit more from this post, too much wool gathering, not enough spinning.