Cardinals Win!

Last night the St. Louis Cardinals became the 2011 World Series Champions. At the start of September, they were 10 1/2 games out and just about everyone had written them off by that point. I was at what turned out to be pivotal game for the Cards on September 9, 2011. It was the start of a three game match-up with the Braves. The Braves had a very comfortable lead against the Cards for the NL Wild Card spot. However, the Braves ended up losing that game 4-3 in the bottom of the 10th. That was the game that things went downhill for the Braves and uphill for the Cards. Over the next 7 weeks, the Cardinals went on to have one of the biggest comebacks and turnarounds in baseball history.

Even if you're not a Cardinals fan, you have to admit that this World Series was a great series. There was some bad baseball, but there was also a lot of great baseball. Games 3 (all of those runs) and 6 (extra innings and there were two times the Cardinals were one strike away from loosing) were particularly memorable.

In post-season, all the talk is going to be about Pujols. He's a great player and if he sticks in St. Louis, he'll have a career even after he retires. They'll put him in the office, maybe even hire him as manager if he wants. He'll get a statue in front of Busch Stadium and will probably be even more adored in St. Louis than Stan Musial. His agent want a 10-year $300 million contract. Had the Cardinals not be idiots and signed Matt Holliday for such an extensive and expensive contract (7 years for $120 million) in 2009, they would have the money they needed to keep Pujols around. Holliday isn't a consistent player. He has moments of greatness, but they aren't reliable. Pujols is and has been. In the next 10 years, Pujols probably will be reliable for that time, but it's difficult to say. Ten years is a long time, particularly when a baseball player is reaching the twilight of his career. I'm not sure what I would do if I was in Pujols place. He'll make a great deal of money either way and his family should never have to worry about finances ever for at least three generations. He'll make a lot more money in the short term if he goes to New York (about the only team in baseball with a bottomless bank account). However, if I was in Pujols's shoes, I think I would stay. St. Louis has been his home his whole career and no matter where he goes, he'll never have "fans" who like him as much as they do in St. Louis. If he stays in St. Louis and he gets injured or his career ends abruptly, he'll still be adored. If he leaves, he'll be seen as a traitor who betrayed his hometown for more money; in the St. Louis area he'll be the Benedict Arnold of baseball. The true Cardinal fans'll resent him for awhile, but then welcome him back with open arms whenever he does come back to visit, but most of Cardinal Nation isn't composed of true baseball and Cardinal fans. There are only about 15% of "Cardinal Nation" that are true baseball and Cardinal fans. The rest of "Cardinal Nation" is composed of fairweather fans who care more about the spectacle than they do the game. In fact, most Cardinal fans don't even consider themselves to be a part of "Cardinal Nation" (I don't, for instance). That's a neat little marketing tool creating by the Cardinal advertisers to get people to come to the games and sell merchandise to people who normally couldn't care less about baseball.

I'm relatively young, but I'm pretty much and old foagie, fuddy-duddy in the way I view the world and see things. Pujols is a great player, but he's only a part of the Cardinals. For me, the players I've enjoyed watching the most this season have been guys like this:Lance Berkman

David Freese

Berkman is a classic old-school ball player. He's not really skinning or overtly muscular. He's built they way Babe Ruth and Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb were. He looks the way a baseball player (except for pitchers) is supposed to look in my mind. Not only that, but he plays with a pure love for the game. You can see it in his eyes every time he's up to bat and with every play that he makes (see picture above). He loves the game of baseball. This season he's had a comeback, too. The Braves and Yankees all wrote the guy off before the Cardinals signed him this year. Even though he wants to coach college baseball in Texas after he retires from the majors, I think he'd like to stick around St. Louis until then. I know I'd love watching him.

Then there's David Freese. David Freese is a St. Louis native. When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that a local boy goes into the majors and eventually becomes the hero and MVP of a World Series playing for his hometown team in the ballpark not far from where he grew up. Freese has had a good season, but it's one that got better in the post season. Freese saved the Cardinals several times not with just hits and homeruns, but with stellar plays. Other players did, too, but the other players aren't local boys like Freese. That's what makes his story that much more special.

Congratulations, St. Louis Cardinals on a job well done. 11 in 2011. I didn't think it was possible, but it's happened. My Dad and Grandpa always said the "Cardinals can never do things the easy way." I guess this season has shown that. But, even though they didn't do it the easy way, they ended up doing it the right way.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Culls the Comics

On Monday morning I was reading The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had dropped six comics from its pages and replaced them with six other comics. The comics dropped were:

"Get Fuzzy", "Frazz", "Lola", "Rose is Rose", "Mallard Fillmore", and "9 Chickweed Lane." I'm not sure why these comics were chosen to "die" because in the small blurb in the paper (on the back of the front page completely away from the comics) it doesn't really say. There was no poll or survey; just an editorial decision. I know "Mallard Fillmore" got a lot of complaints, but so does "Doonesbury" and The Post-Dispatch would never drop that "comic". The paper tried dropping "9 Chickweed Lane" a couple years ago, but there was such an outrage they kept it. I like "9 Chickweed Lane", but it's the only one of the six dropped that doesn't have a large fan base.

Of the new comics chosen to replace the "dead" ones, one is a hugely unpopular one that The Post-Dispatch dropped years ago: "Bizarro". "Bizarro" was a comic that always polled at the bottom of every reader survey and poll the paper had. Yet, the editors kept it for many years before finally dropping it. Now, they've brought it back. Unbelievable.

For a newspaper that is struggling in an industry that is on the verge of collapse, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch sure enjoys edging itself further into decline.

Vincentennial

As a kid, I didn't know very much about Vincent Price. I thought he had an amazing voice, but about the only things I knew him for were Saturday morning cartoons such as THE 13 GHOSTS OF SCOOBY DOO and as the narrator in that scary Michael Jackson video. It wasn't until years later that I learned how talented an actor Price really was. May 27th was Price's birthday and this year he would have been 100 years-old.

Price was a native of St. Louis and in honor of one of their hometown boys who did well, St. Louis held a two week celebration of Vincent Price called Vincentennial. There were all sorts of film showings, there was a special play being performed about Price, there were lectures, and there interviews and presentations by famous people. During the first weekend I went to one of the Vincentennial events. It was held at the Hi-Pointe theatre in St. Louis. It was a special showing of the movie THE TOMB OF LIGEIA previewed by an interview with Roger Corman (I was sitting about 15 feet away from Corman before the interview began). Last week I had a chance to see a special Vincent Price exhibit at The Sheldon. It's not very large, but is really interesting. The exhibit will be there until August and is free, so if you're in St. Louis, I highly recommend it.

I also attended a presentation by Victoria Price, Vincent's daughter, that was held at the Missouri History Museum. It was extremely interesting (and also free!). I learned a lot about Price that I never knew about before and has made me interested in exploring more of the man's work. Happy Birthday, Vincent Price!

At the Other Premiere of THE OTHER GUYS

So, late yesterday afternoon I went with my brother to St. Louis. St. Louis beat 19 other cities out in an online voting contest to hold the Other Premiere for THE OTHER GUYS, a new movie starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. Ferrell and Wahlberg were scheduled to make an appearance and my brother is a huge Ferrell fan. The red carpet line-up was scheduled to start at 7:30P.M.

The first celebrity to appear was one that was completely unexpected: the one and only Don King.

The radio DJ's who were emceeing the event were completely caught off guard by that one. They weren't as surprised when a couple of expected guests arrived shortly after: Ozzie Smith & Mayor Francis Slay.

The DJs recoginzed some St. Louis Blues players, but they had no idea who any of the St. Louis Rams were, including offensive lineman Phil Trautwein who was dressed in a giant Elf costume. Poor Rams. Maybe if they'd win more than 1 or 2 games a season, people would start caring about them again.

After a couple of hours waiting near a barricade (and seeing one woman almost faint from heat exhaustion nearby), Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg finally arrived.

The Mayor gave them keys to the City of St. Louis. Ozzie Smith gave them Cardinals jerseys with his number, but with their names. Someone from the Rams gave them Rams jerseys. They chatted for a bit. Then they "drove away" apparently to return to the theatre to take some questions from people who were lucky enough to get in to see the movie. Overall, it was quite a memorable evening.