Baseball

The past few days have been all about baseball.

Buying tickets to the NLDS, the NLCS and ... the World Series! Making plans. Going to games. Watching the Cardinals win. Talking about the games afterwards. Waking up tired. Looking forward to the next game.

Feeling gooooooood.

: )

And underneath it all, I am not even a Cardinals fan. OK, we have discussed this before: I am a Cubs fan. But I officially wrote them off this season, the last week of the season, after threatening to do so all season long. From the time I heard them talking about the playoffs, in April, to the time I saw them play a thoroughly lackluster game against the Cardinals in June (or maybe it was July?), to the time I heard them trying to blame their lack of success on the WGN announcers. Capped by the boneheaded moves by a couple of their pitchers, and finished off by their complete team-wide fizzle at the end of the season.

Matter of fact, I have written them off for next season, too.

I am not saying I will not consider getting behind them again, but I need more from them than I am getting. I do not mind if they are mediocre to awful but try hard; I cannot BEAR if they are loaded with talent and play like a bunch of putzes. And act like a bunch of whiny-ass crybabies.

So, there.

The Cardinals, on the other hand, have not failed to amaze me all season long. They are fun to watch and they act like professionals (mostly), and they seem to enjoy themselves. Which is what it is all about, really: They play BASEBALL. The best game there is. Period.

Mostly, I like them because of my friends. And because of my dad.

And because it has been 17 years since the Cardinals last went to the World Series.

And the last time they went, my dad was alive.

And for the life of me, I do not remember discussing any of the games with him. I do not even remember much about the 1987 World Series, in fact, except that the Minnesota Twins won it. In seven games, I believe. And that Kirby Puckett might have made a rather spectacular catch somewhere along the line, possibly in center field ... but again, my memory fails me right now. And I have no desire to google it all and find out. Not right now, anyway.

What I remember about 1987, around about World Series time, was that I had moved to this town and started my job about 3 months earlier. As a news/feature writer/photographer. And shortly thereafter became the sports editor. So when the Cards made the World Series, I am sure I went to some tavern, somewhere, and took pictures of people watching one of the games.

I do not remember watching much of them myself because I was still trying to settle in. And I was running back and forth to see my college buddies on weekends. So I likely missed Games 1 & 2 and 6 & 7, unless they happened to be on TVs in any of the bars I visited during either of my weekend jaunts to my college town during that time.

And so the Cardinals lost, and the only conversation I remember having with my father was the one when his friend drove him down to my apartment, late one night, after I had been at the state fair (which is not THE actual state fair, but sort of a state fair for this portion of the state, as if this state is so large that it needs 2 state fairs) watching Three Dog Night and The Beach Boys. (I went to see The Beach Boys but left with a new appreciation of Three Dog Night after realizing I knew every one of their songs, but had not realized they were the ones who sang them!) And this would have been a couple of months before the World Series, anyway.

And actually, I do not remember that conversation with my father. I only remember that he was drunk, and that I told him I needed to get to bed because I had to work the next day, and that he would have to leave. That was the only time he came to my town, to my apartment, and my visits to The Ville were far and few between, too, so we probably did not see each other more than a half-dozen or so times over the next 3½ years.

Which makes me sad, right now, and fills me with regret.

[You do not regret the things you do; you regret the things you do not do.]

The last baseball conversation I really remember with my dad was after the Cardinals had lost the 1985 World Series. And they had it WON, baby, before getting totally, undeniably robbed on a bad call at first base in Game 6. (I am pretty sure it was Game 6; again, I was not watching all that closely, and it has been many years since then.) And then they went on to lose Game 7, which meant the Kansas City Royals were the World Series champions.

I remember calling my dad, or maybe he had called me (probably he called me), and I laughed about how the Cardinals had lost. I laughed about the bad call and said I was glad they had lost, and he tried to shrug it off. I remember making a pretty big deal about it, the way, in years since, people have made a pretty big deal about how horrible the Cubs are, or how funny it is, during the seasons when they have actually made a postseason run, when they end up blowing it, as they inevitably always do.

[The real difference between the Cardinals and the Cubs, I have discovered, is simple: When you watch the Cardinals, you always expect something good to happen; when you watch the Cubs, you always expect something bad to happen.]

When I think back to that phone conversation with my father in 1985, which I have quite a bit over these past few weeks, I wish I could take back those words. I do not want to be the person who kicks another when he or she is down; I do not want to pile on, adding my own injurious words to the insult.

And so, now, when I watch these grown men playing the best game in the world, baseball, I think of my dad. I wonder which current Cardinals player he would like best ... and then I realize, I do not even know which Cardinals player, from all the years he had watched them, was his favorite. (I do know that he threatened to write off the team when they traded Keith Hernandez, and I am thinking Dad had a bit of a thing for Joaquin Andujar, too. And how could he have not loved Ozzie Smith? And I seem to remember, somewhere in my not-so-reliable memory, that he took us to see Bob Gibson at least once ... but what about Stan the Man? And all of the other players that Dad had watched when he was a kid, and a teen-ager, and a man in his 20s and 30s and very very early 50s, before he left?)

He would love how Albert Pujols and Scott Rolen hit. And how Rolen and Edgar Renteria knock down every ball hit their direction. And how Steve Kline and Julian Tavarez are just a little off, most of the time. And how Mike Matheny is a wall, defensively.

Mostly, though, after watching Jim Edmonds hit the game-winning home run in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series and make the game-winning catch in Game 7, I believe Edmonds would have been his favorite player on this Cardinals team.

I regret that I do not know these things for certain about my dad.

And so, when I watch these games, from the not-so-cheap cheap seats at Busch Stadium or in the comfort of my living room, I am trying to imagine how my father would feel. And I am allowing myself to feel the excitement and the nervousness and the joy that you feel when the team you love competes at this time of year, at the time when every hit, every run, every out is important.

And I realize it is about so much more than baseball.

Go, Cardinals!