Tag Archives: Saint Louis Cardinals

2011 World Series, Game 8

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Let’s just cut to the chase, the Cardinals won, again. For some reason, Fox, the Rangers and everybody else were under the mistaken opinion that the World Series ended with game seven. I guess that explains why none of them ever showed up. Everyone in Saint Louis knew different and were downtown today to cheer on their Redbirds. That’s what it seemed like today, a parade, a party, another Cardinal victory. You know, when things are going so well that you just don’t want them to end. Anne and I biked downtown to the capital of Baseball Nation. We were joined by several hundred thousand or more of our closest friends. The Red Sea of fans parted and the parade began. Tony and the Clydesdales led off the parade and Motte closed it. Notice Tony is wearing both of his Cardinal World Series rings. Many of the players brought their families along. It was more difficult than I thought that it would be photographing this event. The intervening crowd made getting a good shot difficult. I named all the players that I could. If anyone knows the names of any of the rest, let us know. We’ll update this post with the new information. We got 17 miles, a great parking space and beat all the traffic headaches too. Go Cards!

Saint Louis is better than Texas!

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Yesterday was all about the escape from Dayton. After our meeting, we raced to the airport. Check-in there yielded not the requisite two boarding passes, but rather two promissory notes. The first one was quickly converted to a boarding pass and off we flew to O’Hare. There we found our connection oversubscribed. With some trepidation, we waited in line, while the wait listed passenger’s names scrolled across the big screen. Finally our turn came. From an array of preprinted passes the attendant picked one for each of us. We were going to Saint Louis. Apparently everybody wanted to go to Saint Louis that night. Three of us ended up in the last row, on the prop-line, me with the window seat. I had a great view of the engine cowling as we flew over Busch Stadium last night.

The heat was on when I arrived home, Anne was on the couch and the score was already two-to-two, but I knew that already. I had no car radio, but I did have the Sporting News app on my iPhone. Last night’s game was tame, maybe even boring compared to the previous night’s game, where the Rasputin Cardinals just would not die. Now they are the World Champions. The franchise now has eleven such titles, for 11 in ’11, more than any other team save one, those damn Yankees. Tomorrow there will be a parade; Saint Louis always loves a parade. It will love this one better than most. I went to the one in 2006; this one should be just as good. Even though the parade is not until four, we’ll bike downtown, just to avoid traffic and parking hassles. We’ll bring lights along for the return run. Unfortunately, we have to wait until the Rams lose. It is the polite thing to do.

I have not heard a peep from my brothers, since the early innings of game six. Admittedly, I was a bit gruff then, but I and the Cards were in a bad place. Now that the matter is settled, I want to test the depth of their Ranger fandom. I’m pretty sure that last year they rooted for the Giants over the Rangers. I suspect that they are not so much pro-Rangers as they are anti-Cardinals, or closer to the point, set against me. I call it sibling rivalry. When Chris actually lived in Texas, Anne, our boys and I would visit for the holidays. Uncle Chris would challenge the boys with the declaration that Dallas is better than Saint Louis. This taunt would of course elicit the desired Pavlovian response; at least the boys were acting appropriate to their ages. I eventually would step in and then things would begin to escalate. In the eighties Dallas-Fort Worth had a lot of things going for it. It was a happening place. Saint Louis had longevity going for it. It was a city when Fort Worth was just a fort and Dallas no more than a small town. Saint Louis also had baseball. ’85 and ’87 were both pennant years and also our sons’ birth years. Both Anne and the Cardinals delivered those two years. Sibling escalation eventually led to Saint Louis being pitted against the entire state of Texas. It is hard for one small Midwestern burg to beat an entire state, especially one as big as Texas, but we did. Saint Louis is better than Texas!

Anne and I biked in the Park today. The fall colors are really starting to show themselves. I’ve been working a time-lapse photography project involving our new tree. It is really starting to autumn blaze. I hope to show it soon. We got 17 miles. We have a biker party tonight. The euphoria that has captivated Saint Louis should be on full display tonight.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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Last night’s baseball game started out ugly. At times it looked really bad. By the end though, things had turned out pretty good. I watched the game in the eastern time zone, so it made for a really, really late night and then an even earlier morning. I’m glad though that I watched the entire game. It was well worth the loss of sleep. Last night’s game has been called one for the ages. It certainly was memorable. In the 1970s, the Saint Louis football Cardinals were also known as the cardiac Cards, for their heart stopping game endings. Last night’s baseball Cardinals must have filled up every cardiac ward in town. Joe Buck, the Fox sportscaster, called the game with the same words that his father, Jack, once used, “See you tomorrow.” Tomorrow is now today. Tonight is game seven of the World Series. After tonight, everyone goes home for the season. Go Cards! After all, for tonight, only the sky is the limit.

Rain Delay

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The sixth game of the World Series was scheduled for tonight, but someone forgot to check the weather. This month of October has been dominated with balmy, sunny and warm days. It is most unlike Saint Louis to turn such a cold shoulder to the Series like it has both this week and last, except does this open the door for a possible Carpenter game seven start? There is a good chance that I will watch part if not all of the remainder of the World Series in O’Hare. I am scheduled to fly through Chicago on both Thursday and Friday. If everything goes alright, then this won’t be the case. As one of my co-workers pointed out today, nothing good ever happens in a Chicago airport. I won the lottery this week and my prize was a one night, all expense paid trip to Dayton. Second prize was two nights.

We have picked a furnace. We went green, with a 95% efficient Trane gas furnace. We also went expensive. It is scheduled to be installed on Friday. Anne shouldered the lion’s share of managing this task, dealing face-to-face with the contractors, collating their bids and then checking up on them (BBB, Angie’s). Even though tonight is inhospitable for baseball, there ought to be enough residual heat in this old brick house to keep us comfortable tonight, and tomorrow night? I’ll be out of town. I am so bad.

I heard an article on NPR tonight. This is a preface that always sends a chill down the back of my friend, the Perma-Bear. I’m not speaking about that fake California sun bear who has been masquerading this week as the Perma-Bear. The real Perma-Bear is a true Cardinals fan. This NPR article covered the maiden commercial flight of the 787. The Perma-Bear was part of the delivery team for this particular tail. The interviewed AP reporter just gushed all over this bird. The reporter described the vaulted ceiling and the one third larger windows that let in so much more light. Are we speaking of an airplane or a cathedral here? Business class passengers spent as much as $30K for a choice seat and then spent most of the flight chumming in coach. The line for the restroom was enormous. Everyone just had to check it out.

Baseball Culture

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I heard KWMU’s Don Marsh “Saint Louis on the Air” interview with Bob Krizek, a professor of communications at Saint Louis University (SLU). Dr. Krizek arguably has one of the best jobs in Saint Louis. His job seemingly is to philosophize about baseball. Admittedly not an “on the field” expert of baseball, listening to his interview he seemed better suited as a pastor in the Church of Baseball then as the professor he is at SLU, the very Catholic Jesuit University in town. One of his opening comments was that more people watch sports then attend church on Sunday.

An eighteen year resident of Saint Louis, Krizek hales from Chicago, but that’s OK. He is a White Sox fan and not a Cubs fan. His top ten list appears on the SLU website and lists his top ten favorite baseball games. Almost all of them are mere footnotes in the history of baseball, but serve to underscore his belief that baseball acts as a bridge between the generations. Younger fans remember going to the ball game with their elders, while older people come to cherish the time spent with the young.

I learned that Saint Louis was once the baseball team for the entire west, the only team west of the Mississippi. Back in the day, when radio was king, and was still the soundtrack of summer, baseball from Saint Louis spread out across the west. In the fifties though, the Giants and the Dodgers broke that monopoly and now there is a half-dozen or more teams in the west. Krizek describes his adopted city as strange. Saint Louisans expect to produce a playoff team every year and a World Series team every five years. Coming from Chicago I can see why he might think of this as strange. Is this really so strange though? No one thinks it strange of New York, or Boston. Maybe it is only strange that the bantam Saint Louis punches so well above its weight?

After all, this year finds this one small town pitted against the entire state of Texas. Last night’s game was both disappointing and frustrating. It was even more so, in the morning, after some of the behind the scenes machinations became known. The Cardinals are back in town now. Tomorrow night they play downtown. It’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die. As for love, the Cards had us at hello. As for glory, they’ve covered themselves before and will again. Now it is time to do or not do, there is no try, let alone die.

I met the most odd of birds on Saturday, another bicycling ornithologist. He pointed out and identified the above pictured Pied-billed Grebe. In truth he was the ornithologist, I was just a bird-watcher. He went on to identify Swamp Sparrows, yep, they’re in Sibley’s too. He was very generous and pleasant, so I should feel bad about telling you all that my bike was way better than his.

Now as this story heats up, it is time for another furnace update. Anne only saw one furnace contractor today. Add the five that she saw yesterday and that gave us six quotes to wade through today. Time for another spreadsheet! We’ve winnowed down the list to four and expect to pick one of them tomorrow. We are leaning towards the high-efficiency, 95% efficiency variety, the expensive ones. Cold weather coming in tomorrow should help expedite this process.

Illuminated Autumn Leaves

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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!