Posted as Facebook Note on 10/09/09
Fall is my favorite time of year: the leaves change, the weather gets cool, and Oktoberfest brews come out. It’s also the best time of year for sports (second place: March): MLB playoffs, college football and the start of NHL and NFL. The season is always filled with hope and excitement, twists and turns, surprises and fond memories.
All of that changed last night.
I’ll go in chronological order and start with the Cardinals game. It’s important to view it in context. By any measure you want to use, the Cardinals are second best franchise in the history of the great game of baseball. As long as we have a competent GM and an owner that will spend at least some money, we always find a way to win. This has been especially true since 2001 when an unknown converted catcher made the club as a third basemen because our free agent signing, Bobby Bonilla, went down with a bad hammy. Since then Pujols has been the player of the decade and, many would argue, the Cardinals have been the team of the decade in the National League. In the history of our franchise, spring blooms every year and we have a chance to play in the post season. Fall sets in, September rolls around, and we still have that chance. We don’t play every postseason, but we play in most of them. Case in point: Pujols has an elbow that needs surgery with a long recovery time. He’d needed to have it in August/September in order to be ready for spring training. He hasn’t had the surgery because as long as he’s been with the club we’ve never played meaningless games in August and September. We were always in it. We didn’t always win, but we were always right there within striking distance. If we did lose, we re-grouped, started over, and put together a successful season the next year. It’s how it works. We’re the Cardinals.
That changed last night around 9:00 pm when a fly ball was hit to our All Star left fielder with two outs in the 9th down one game to none in the best of five series. The ball was supposed to be caught, the win celebrated, the flight boarded, and the momentum shifted back to St. Louis and the home fans. We were supposed to take the series and, in an ultimate best case scenario, win the World Series. The off season would have then unfolded something like this: Offer DeRosa arbitration and because of his age and injury, he accepts. LaRussa, sensing we can win a few more in the next five years, re-signs. The press—and fans—shower Duncan with praise after one of the most dominant seasons by a group of starting pitchers in recent memory. He re-signs. Smoltz re-signs for another go around to work with Dunc. We make competitive offers to Holliday and Pinero and hopefully re-sign one of them. Spring blossoms, the season starts and we do it all over again.
When the ball went through Holliday (statistically one of the best left fielders in the game of baseball) I first screamed “no” and then screamed a few other choice words. It didn’t seem like it could be happening. Yes, All Starts make mistakes. Holliday can make a mistake. But Cardinals just don’t make mistakes. Especially not in big games with the series on the line. The magnitude of the situation hit me when MLB asked people to tweet in biggest post season goats—not named Holliday. It hit home again this morning with Bernie, who write for the St. Louis Post Dispatch compared the Cards series with LA to the series when LA played….the Cubs. Yes, the loss was that big. All of a sudden, Holliday isn’t re-signing, DeRosa isn’t that good, and we’re probably going to lose Duncan and LaRussa. Suddenly we’re no longer the Cardinals.
Right after that game ended the Mizzou game started and the reality of the situation was I had already lost most of my voice from yelling at the TV over the course of one inning. The thing about Mizzou football is that is the exact opposite of Cardinal baseball. We all expect the Cards to win based on history and, after a few decades of awfulness and bad luck, the stark reality is that Mizzou fans, in the back of our minds, secretly expect the Tigers to lose. There is precedent. Other teams get fifth downs and are allowed to kick balls. We build up a good program with good players only to come close but not close enough. Before the season started I was debating Bigelow as to our record and the state of our program. I said that this season will define Mizzou football for decades to come. In the past we had a good team with great players and when the great players left we fell flat on our faces. Great programs have great players leave and they keep on winning. I bet we’d keep winning—that we had overcome the hump and that we were a solid program, not just a school that manages to pull it together for a good season here or there.
I declared yesterday the worst day ever a bit prematurely when Gabbart fumbled early in the pouring rain and clearly got hurt in the process. It was clear it was going to be a ground game and seeing as how we haven’t established one this year, I thought we were doomed. Somehow, the team pulled it together and after the safety I even commented that we might win this game 2-0. The touchdown going into the half might have been one of the greatest feelings in the word. It was on par with seeing the SI cover declaring us #1 in the nation. It was significant. Nebraska wasn’t moving the ball at all on our suddenly energized defense and the field conditions were getting worse, not better. It seemed like 9 points might win the game, handily. When Gabbart—showing not only tons of talent, but also tons of heart—crossed the goal line we became a football program. With that score we were well position to win the Big 12 North—again—and more significantly, win it the year after we sent all of our playmakers to the NFL to play on Sundays.
Toward the end of the game I got up to get another drink and when I sat back down we had the lead, the ball, and Nebraska had no clue what they were doing on offense. I remarked to Bigelow, “Is it possible we are going to get back-to-back wins on the Family of Networks?” (referring to the MU OkState game next week picked up by the Duce). He commented we need to focus on this game first. I remember thinking to myself: we’re Mizzou, we now own Nebraska and the North. We’ve got this. As I made my statement about back-to-back ESPN wins, on Facebook my friends and I were exchanging comments about keeping the rivalry bell. Cardinal loss or not, life was still pretty good. Cue disaster. Two passes, two interceptions. Game over. North dominance over. Hope for a brighter future over.
All of a sudden I wake up today and iits 85 degrees, the Oktoberfest tastes stale, and I have no reason to watch another sporting event all fall. It’s been claimed that I tend to over-exaggerate things, but I don’t think that is the case about yesterday. Life changed both suddenly and tragically. The Cardinals stopped being the Cardinals and Mizzou started being Mizzou (in the bad way). The footsteps started creeping in…all of a sudden Pinkel’s “show the nation we deserve more respect” angle to his players feels a little bit hallow…all of a sudden the Cubs aren’t the only baseball team in the Central that can always seem to find a way to lose. I can’t ever remember a loss this tough or more far-reaching for the Cardinals in my lifetime. The loss the KC comes close, but even in that we can claim we should have rightfully won…that it wasn’t our fault. This time it was. Just like the Cubs, we were losers.
For Mizzou, this one hits home especially hard even though, there are probably other games that should hurt far worse. A sampling of my worst witnessed Mizzou losses:
1.) Farmer’s Broken Leg – I happened to be on the Mizzou sideline right before the half when he went down. I could hear him screaming from the sideline and the screaming got much, much worse once he was off the field in the in the tunnel. It was sure sign that we were going to lose the game—Homecoming no less—and without him it was going to be another long year.
2.) Loss vs. Bowling Green @ BG – In Grad School at Miami-Ohio I beat the Mizzou/Big 12 drum pretty loudly claiming we played “real football” not the light stuff played in the MAC. I talked most of my cohort into buying tickets and making the drive to the game. I ended up moving away from them in the stands and watching the game alone in the pouring rain.
3.) Loss @ Kansas – We traveled to Kansas and stayed in the worst hotel ever constructed because we felt the game was a for sure win. It wasn’t.
4.) Loss vs. Kansas @ Arrowhead 08 – It’s still too soon to talk about this.
5.) Kicked Ball Game – Insert your own personal story here. I had one foot on the wall getting ready to go over onto the field.
6.) Losing the #1 Ranking
All of these, as difficult as they were, were just games. Last night felt like something more. It felt like the year when the BCS rankings came out and we didn’t make a BCS game but three teams we beat did. The feeling—along with how I felt last night—had longer reaching implications than just one loss. It was more than a loss; it was an event that defined who we are and what our place is in the football hierarchy.
Moving forward I have a few hopes. I hope that on Saturday the fans at Busch give Holliday a standing ovation instead of booing him out of St. Louis. He’s human. Humans make mistakes. He just had the misfortune of wearing a uniform that many players wore before him—players that didn’t make mistakes. I also hope that Gabbart somehow gets himself up out of bed today—mentally and physically. The team isn’t going to take its cues from the coaches, it is going to take its cues from him. He needs to shake of the mistakes and get some sort of swagger back this week in practice. We need to win—or come real close—against Ok State next week. We can't lose back to back games on ESPN. We might win if he leads the team. It won’t happen if he mopes. I also hope he calls his brother and asks Young Gabbart to do him a solid and sign on the dotted line with Mizzou and end the whole Nebraska recruiting drama.
If that happens, then perhaps the Nebraska loss last night would be like losing a battle but still give us a chance to win the war. And perhaps the same might be said for the Cards if we win on Saturday and Sunday and the series goes the full five games. But right now, on all fronts, it feels like both the battles and the wars are both lost.
