:( And with Cardinal baseball over it’s back being a photo, haiku, and an odd prose reflection blog

Class act and amazing MVP, Marco Scaturo. Congratulations. Matt Cain, he of the beaning of Matt Holliday only after a 7 run lead, not so much. I know vengeance is the Lord’s and I guess the tables are even and Matheny showed great forbearance in not retaliating, but maybe, just maybe on a sleepy July afternoon in the dog days of summer next year, when Matt Cain is at bat he feels a sharp pain somewhere on his upper body. I’m just saying. Baseball players have long memories.

Thanks for a fun, if inconsistent season, Cardinals. Congrats on getting to the NCLS on your first time out of the box, Mike Matheny.Go Tigers!

Of Giants and Gene Pools, Cardinals and Cardiacs, and Baseball Game Sevens…There Had to be a Game Seven

Tonight just after Angel Pagan hauled in Daniel Descalso’s final fly ball out to hand the Cardinals a second consecutive loss and yet again push them to the brink, my young nephew made a beeline to leave the room, to go sort out sorrow and anger and to lick his wounds alone. It is a response I recognize because it would have been exactly my own response at that age. In truth, it is often my own response today, and sometimes for far more important things than baseball. I did make it a point to haul him in and onto my lap tonight, though, to talk through disgust and hope together, to share the load of disappointment if only a little bit. I miss that sort of lap for me, too, to plop down into myself, but I reckon that lack is one thing that being an adult is about.

As my little doppelganger, it is amazing to see many of his similarities to me in his look, his frame, and mannerisms. It is less pleasurable to see the Das nervousness and bent toward the melancholy be passed on in the young ones, in him and his brother. Sometimes it makes you wonder whether you ought to pass along such things as the love of baseball at all. But even if the Cardinals lose again tomorrow and end their year, eliciting even deeper disappointment, it will have been worth it to have shared the excitement through the late summer and fall, to have received random texts about baseball scores, to be able to remember Andrew and Jack’s laughter as their silly, burly uncle missed the pitching screen in the summer again and again and again.

Speaking of that game tomorrow. It is a game 7, as it almost had to have been if you think about it, even if on Friday night Cardinals fans had fostered hopes of an easy NLCS victory to go on to face the raring-to-go Detroit Tigers. And though I could tell you that the Cardinals are at their best when their backs are against the wall, it would not be with much conviction. It does not look good. And even if we do make it through, that “we” a communal one of city and team, it may be as the poorer side with a weaker set of pitchers and more inconsistent hitters, but it will be nonetheless our team that makes it through, and, yes, a team that never gives up.

The Cardinals and Giants played each other 12 times this year with each team winning 6 games. They have played each other 6 times in the postseason, with each team winning 3. Something has to give. And with some bloops and some blasts from Cardinal bats, with a couple of pitchers making a stand, anything is possible. Tomorrow night about this same time I will make a tiny post with two simple pieces of punctuation, a colon followed by a parenthesis. We will just have so see which way that parenthesis is going to face.

And, finally, somewhere in the great beyond Carmen Miranda is saying, “Hey, wait a minute…”

inked in cardinal red – A Haiku for All St. Louis – Baseball Poetry

today all the lines,
city county divide, inked
in cardinal red
_____________

I am not a fool (at least not all of the time). I know it is just baseball. Tomorrow St. Louis will be the same city with sad racial and economic divisions between black and white and city and county. In a month, even if we win the series, baseball will not have had the power to create change. That lies in efforts elsewhere. Even the beloved ball park, Busch Stadium, itself, is a microcosm of the city – if you notice who sits where and who it is who mostly sit and who mostly serves, even who rakes the infield between innings, sort of fun glory job.

Even so, it is amazing just who Cardinal baseball gets talking to one another, often in excited or worried fashion, as they articulate shared hopes and fears and sweat out the games togethr. Just now a bunch of biddies in the Goodwill, in search of a tiny red jacket for a rally squirrel, were talking baseball, even if they were all confused about the status of the series, as “Play it Cardinal Style” pumped out on the radio. Yeah, it’s that kind of town.

So, if for a couple of weeks in October even if only our dividing lines get drawn in Cardinal red, well, that ain’t too bad.

In extras, the month – October Baseball Haiku

In extras, the month
Flips to the crack of a bat.
October. Baseball.

The Batting Lesson – Autumn Baseball

An Afternoon in Baseball Heaven – Cardinals vs. Giants – Busch Stadium, St. Louis, MO

In the Little Leagues – Negotiating Base Paths

A Place With the Greats? – Busch Stadium Statues and Albert Pujols

Driving home from Illinois tonight, I decided to stop by downtown to see what I might see through my camera. The area surrounding Busch Stadium was almost completely deserted, a far cry from the crushing crowd that night in October when the Cardinals clinched the World Series.

And as I walked I wondered to myself whether or not this version of Busch Stadium, Busch III, could rightly be called “the house that Albert built.” I figured probably not, but he certainly was key in filling the seats in it and its predecessor for the 10 years he played here, which makes it all the more sad that there is a good chance that he may never have a statue at the stadium. If he had not ended up an Angel, he would almost certainly have had one to match the large one of Stan Musial outside the stadium’s main entrance. Though I am still rather upset with Mr. Pujols, still rather sore, I guess deep down I hope that one day he may, indeed, join Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, and Rogers Hornsby in this pantheon of smaller statues–if that blasted personal service contract he signed will allow him!

One thing I do know–whether or not any night in St. Louis next October will approach the glory of those final two nights of the World Series this past October, the summer will be full of stories, nonetheless, of batting averages and home run totals and team records. It will be full of steamy days and rain delays, hot dogs and beer, Cubbies and Cardinals. And, yes, I will be keeping one eye on the coast.

The Post That Never Was – The Rally Squirrel Lives!!!!! – A World Series Classic

Tonight I was making like a sportswriter and writing an epitaph to the Cardinals season, even as I watched the end of the game and was madly participating in the shared sports commentary that is the act of watching a game with hundreds of Facebook friends—liking and commenting on status updates, all the while trying to make witty, insightful ones of my own, which is a new sort social capital.

Mind you the epitaph which I was writing was also one which required constant updating so I could hit the “Publish” button at the very moment the game was over. And at the end of innings 9 and 10, when the Cardinals were down to their last strike, my finger was literally on the button. And then with some time to breathe after a scoreless top of the 11th, David Freese hit the shot that jolted St. Louis and the baseball world and my “journalistic” trigger finger relaxed as well.

So, after a horrible 6 innings, the errors finally settled down and the scoring heated up for both teams. And with St. Louis scoring in the bottom of the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th innings (a World Series record), surely the Rally Squirrel is alive and well!

Upon ensuring that David Freese’s 11th inning drive was indeed going over the wall, Joe Buck, echoing his father Jack before him, said, “We’ll see you tomorrow night!” And so we shall!
____________

Below is the post that never was, which if nothing else served as a writing exercise. Go Cards!

The Rally Squirrel Has Left the Building – Congratulations, Rangers, World Series Champs – Thank you, Cardinals, Comeback Wizards

Baseball, like no other, is a game for the superstitious. Players might not wash lucky hats while on a hot streak–growing little colonies of salt crystals–or they may carry out elaborate rituals before and during games, even doing the exact same motions in bat after bat after bat. Fans can almost be as bad.

In truth I am not all that superstitious, but I have been keeping track of how many live squirrels vs. road kill squirrels that I have seen on the streets of St. Louis in this season of the Rally Squirrel–the phenomena that makes us in St. Louis seem rather provincial, but which I have decided may as well be embraced as not. After all, who doesn’t love a squirrel, unless of course they get in your attic.

This afternoon, however, I knew it was not a good sign that while I was out taking pictures of the beautiful Fall foliage, which has decorated the official logo of this Fall Classic so beautifully…

…that I saw a poor little squirrel at the base of a tree. I can only assume that he was Texas bushwhacked on the way to the stadium. Poor little fellow.

In all seriousness, though, congratulations to the Texas Rangers on their first World Series, which was well-deserved, carried out by a manager and group of players who really seem to enjoy playing the game, which is so refreshing. Congratulations, Mr. Napoli, on an amazing series. Congratulations, Josh Hamilton, on playing through pain and coming up huge.

And though the sloppiness of this game will sting for quite a while, though the what if’s of a huge comeback–met by an even bigger comeback by Texas in extra innings, by the wounded, hobbling redemption story that is Josh Hamilton–met by another Cardinal comeback in the 10th that came up just short–will continue to echo, it will not be too long before the good citizens of St. Louis realize just what a special season this team gave this city. And it was just nice to see smiling Cardinals, at least for a few moments, in the bottom of the ninth inning and a whole stadium full of cheering fans. What an amazing sport for drama and tension; the jubilation of victory and the despondency of defeat.

It has been documented on a gazillion web sites, but the St. Louis Cardinals’ ride into and through this post-season has truly been magical, and perhaps there is no city in the baseball playing universe which will appreciate that more…eventually.

“and here’s the pitch….BA-” – Haiku on Baseball – Phillies, Cardinals

and here’s the pitch…BA-
BOOM…BA-BOOM…BA-BOOM…BA…then
flat-line…………………out at first
_______________________

I was very much hoping that the Cardinals would win this game tonight and take a commanding 2-1 lead in the series so that my previous post might be validated Alas, it was not to be. It is the one that got away, and we Cardinal fans may well live to regret this one game over any other in this crazy, glorious season. But, my goodness, the fight in those Redbirds, battling back, battling back even if they ultimately fell short! Even so, all is not lost…we’ll live to fight at least one more night!
_______________________

What is so amazing about baseball is that I can be sitting watching a little computer program that visually represents hits, balls, strikes, outs, runs and have my hands sweating and my heart beating wildly while sitting in a quiet library doing reference work. Part of the reason the tension can ratchet so high is that in baseball there are breaks in the action (which lets my little program work so well in conveying the drama), with any number of variables that can be tweaked between batters or even pitches which can alter the outcome.
_______________________

Whew! It is time to breathe…and then do it all again tomorrow!

I am going to Philly this Saturday morning and I am very much hoping that upon landing that the City of Brotherly love will be waking up in a surly mood, that I will being passing through an airport in which a jubilant Cardinal team would have passed through only a few hours before on the their way home to baseball heaven.