Last week, I was once again reminded of the vast number of readers I have when a few of you lashed out at me for praising the Kansas City Royals, despite my St. Louis roots.
While short-sighted, I can see where they were coming from. The old “you can only root for your hometown team!” (moronic) mindset.
Well let me tell you about my hometown team, the St. Louis Cardinals, and what it’s like to root for them. _It. Is. Boring._ Like all other St. Louisans, I donned my Cardinal red on opening day to watch the Birds dismantle the Cubs like we all knew they would. I then removed my Cardinals attire and threw it in my hamper—where it still resides. Why is my Cardinals gear still in my hamper, other than the fact that I avoid doing laundry like my roommate avoids his 8 a.m. classes? Because I’m not going to need it again until October.
I watched that first game against the Cubs with a decent amount of interest (after all, that’s the only full game I’m going to watch for months). In my mind, though, that game’s outcome was never in question. All due respect to the off-season moves the Cubs made, but the Cardinals and Adam Wainwright do not lose to the Cubbies on opening night.
I didn’t check on the Cards again for another nine games. And what did I see at the end of the first 10 games of the season? A 7-3 record, sitting alone in first place in the NL Central. I was happy to see it of course, but it was just another example of the “Brilliantly Boring Birds.”
To be clear, this is a direct byproduct of being a part of a spoiled fan base. When your team has been as absurdly successful as the Cards have been for the last 15 years, winning doesn’t become as much an expectation as it does a given fact. In 11 of the last 15 years, the Cardinals have made the playoffs. In the four years they missed the playoffs, the Cardinals averaged 83.75 wins. That number is relevant when you remember the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006 with only 83 wins.
So the regular season becomes pretty irrelevant for purposes other than Instagram and Snapchat, when there’s such a likely chance that the Cardinals are going to the playoffs. It raises the question: “What’s the point?” We all know the Cardinals are going to the playoffs again. The rotation hasn’t been this good since Carpenter, Morris, Suppan, Marquis and Williams on that loaded 2004 team.
The offense, while not exactly potent, is more than capable of giving the pitching staff enough run support night-in, night-out to produce wins.
When October rolls around, I’ll once again don my Cardinals gear like so many other members of the “Best Fans in Baseball” (LOL, but my issues with that self-given title are for another column).
Does that make me a bad fan? In the eyes of some, I’m sure it does. But when you’ve seen 11 playoff appearances, four World Series appearances and two World Series titles in such a relatively short period of time, it’s hard not to wait until October to dig that Cardinal Nike polo out of the hamper.
