That was hard to watch.
Scratch that -- that was really hard to watch.
Almost as painful as a 'Dog the Bounty Hunter' marathon.
How does it feel today, Cardinals Nation? Perhaps you woke up with a hangover, a heavy heart and despair? That’s just the inevitable crash downward after being so high for so long.
We Cardinals fans, we baseball junkies, have become so used to the adrenaline rush, the endorphin-boosting thrills, of winning do-or-die games so many times, we’ve forgotten what it feels like to be on the other side of the equation.
For 13 months, the highs had never been higher. Now, the low seems never to have been lower.
As rapturous as the Game Five victory against the Washington Nationals in the Division Series this year -- four runs in the ninth inning when the team was down to its last strike twice!! -- that didn’t guarantee a clear path to victory, to play in the final contest.
As surprising as the World Series championships were in 2006 and 2011, what were arguably the best teams of the past decade provided more clunkers than clinchers.
In 2004 it was the intersection of history and a bunch of "Idiots" from Boston that spelled the end of the MV3's first hurrah.
You know the story. The Red Sox swept the Cardinals in four games, busting the Curse of the Bambino in the House That Steroids Built.
In 2005, we were reminded that not every postseason memory is positive, and not every positive memory had a happy ending. For as long as Brad Lidge remains on this mortal coil, Cardinals fans will forever link his name, and his baseball career, to one pitch in Houston on that fall night in 2005 when Albert Pujols launched a missile over the train tracks.
Before that pitch, Lidge’s career trajectory was rising meteorically, up, up, up, as Mike Shannon might say. Since then, his career has been closer to the other side of the parabola, the sharp slide toward earth (for the record, both he and Albert went on to claim a World Series title or two).
But as much as that moment of glory for Cardinals fans altered Lidge’s career, it didn’t derail the Astros. They kept on chugging, winning game 7 to earn their way to the World Series.
So what if the White Sox beat them? The Astros made it there. Few people take pride in losing, but losing to a winner softens the sting.
What do we remember from 1996?
What should we remember?
The horrible performance from the Cardinals against Atlanta after being up three-games-to-one, or the return to postseason under new ownership and new manager after a drought of success that was unfathomable after the riches of the 1980s and Whiteyball.
Failure is an orphan, and success has many fathers, but whatever you remember from 1996, or 2004 or 2005 or 2012, do not lose sight of the fact that the Cardinals had seven more games (eight if you count the spin-the-wheel play-in game) than all but a few teams.
Brandon Phillips and Reds Nation? Silenced, stunned by the knockout blow from Panda and the San Fran Crew.
With a rookie manager, a broke-down pitching rotation and three future Hall-of-Famers gone, the Cardinals came within one game of another World Series.
The Cardinals got to play seven more games of baseball than 14 other National League teams. Cardinals fans got to see St. Louis experience another Red October, the ninth time in 17 seasons. That is an embarrassment of riches virtually unparalleled in all of Major League Baseball.
It's also seven more times than the Little Bears from the City of Broad Shoulders in that same period.
Cardinals' fans like to pick on the Cubs and their fans. Easy, convenient target and all that.
But, aside from brief blips, the Cubs and their fans have been content to merely exist, as if playing meaningful games past April is too much to bear.
As baseball underwent three rounds of expansion (1969, 1992 and 1998), the Cubs chugged along, making their customary once-a-decade playoff appearances. "Hey, look at us, we made the playoffs!" the fans would say. And then the inevitable but inconceivable came true, time and time again. Thisclose to a World Series on more than one occasion (you might say the gap was as thin as a goat’s hair), the Cubs lived up to a record of futility rivaling Sisyphus.
Or consider the Kansas City Royals. Missouri’s "other" team, whose success has been minimized to one World Series Championship in their lifetime, and that one is courtesy at least in part due to the temporary vision problems that afflicted a first base umpire.
I’ve heard the love and reverence of Cardinals Nation described as a college football atmosphere.
Here in the state that is round on the end and hi in the middle, Ohio State fans blanket the state like smog asphyxiating Los Angeles, and the parallel is pretty amazing. People in this state live and breath Ohio State football, unless of course they root for Michigan. As annoying as these fans can get, their passion and knowledge defines their fanaticism. I'd like to think that Ohio State fans, in that regard, are just like Cardinals fans.
So, the postseason is over now (after the woeful blink-and-miss exit by Detroit), and it is time to rest. To restore and renew faith and energy for the Cardinals, to begin to prepare for the next season.
After all, pitchers and catchers report in a little more than 13 weeks.
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