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by Tom Anselm

Well, here it is August and we who have any interest in St. Louis Cardinal baseball are looking at a disappointing year. I will be the first to admit that I am lukewarm on the local product this year. It is well documented elsewhere that the boys with the birds on the bat have played like, well, not like people who are at the elite level of their profession.

Mistakes on the bases, mental and physical errors, bullpen blowups. Some have questioned the managing of Mike Matheny, which to these critics is proof that he should never have gotten the job. However, he isn’t the guy who takes a third strike or misses the cut-off man.

Last week there is this kerfuffle between said skipper and the future Hall of Fame catcher, Mr. Yadier Molina. It’s a lot of social media ‘He said what about me’ from the catcher, and ‘No, I meant this’ from the manager, then the upper room guys got in on the act.

Interestingly, they are backing their manager in this one, which is no surprise, since they hired him after all. If you ask me, the first two are acting like kids on the playground who can’t get along. Just talk it out, for Ol’ Abner’s sake.

I guess a losing team is going to have these dustups. But the funny thing is, this bunch still has a chance to win the Central Division in the National League. In spite of a lackluster record. In spite of not having many superstars, save for Yadi and maybe Adam Wainright. And also in spite of having at one time six starting players who spent a lot of last year at the Triple A minor league club in Memphis. To be fair, some of these kids are playing some fun baseball, and making it hard not to watch. Their joy is contagious.

   But back to me being a spoiled fan. Rottenly so, actually. I looked back at the records of this franchise since 1998 when they had consistently drawn over 3 million fans a year (one outlier, 2003, missing by 8700 folks). In that almost-20 years, we saw 9 first place winners, 5 seconds, and 3 thirds. Treated to 12 post-season appearances, 4 World Series and 2 World Championships, the 2006 matchup with the Detroit Tigers and, of course, the 2011 adventure versus the Texas Rangers. Pretty good run there, even though both World Series losses were to the dreaded Red Sox. Ugh.

The teams of the ‘60s and ‘80s. Gibson, McCarver, White, Maxvill, Javier. Flood, Boyer, Sadecki, Carlton. Maris and Shannon. And of course, Lou Brock, St. Louis’ best ‘gotcha’ to Chicago of all time. Ten years later it was Ozzie, Willie, Herr, Simmons, Whitey Ball. Names like Worrell, Coleman, Porter, Sutter, Pendleton, Tudor, Van Slyke. Jack Clark and Jose Oquendo. And of course my fave, Joaquin Andujar.

So there sits a heritage that any era of teams would find hard to live up to.

Still, I have hope. Chances are this current flock of ‘Birds won’t fly far this year. But history shows that they will be back in the hunt for a Red October, sooner than later. Until then, I will recall those boyhood summer nights listening to Harry Caray.

“Boyer with a drive…way back… it might be outta here… it could be…”

Ahhh. Baseball in St. Lou.

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