Season in Review (Or, Why Cardinals Fans Should Be Thankful)

This is a little tardy, what with losing the password and all, but here are some thoughts about the way the Cardinals' season ended.


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.

O, Albert! My Albert!

O Albert! My Albert! Your time with the team is done;
Cards Nation will weather your defection, the prize we sought not won;
The park is near, the cries I hear, the people all disgusted,
Disappointed in The Machine, El Hombre we must miss:

But O heart! heart! heart!
bleeding drops of Cardinals red,
While the on-deck circle is bare,
5 no more is said.


O Albert! My Albert! rise up and hear the jeers;
Rise up, for you the banner's flung, Stan's harmonica goes still;
For you, bouquets and ribboned wreathes, for you the stands a-crowding;
For you they'll call, the swaying masses; their eager faces spurning;
Here Albert! dear hitter!
This cap fits not your head
A bad dream: the on-deck circle is bare, 5 no more is said.


My Albert does not answer, his lips are pursed and still;
My Hombre does not feel my wrath, he has no pulse nor will;
Clydesdales are stabled safe and sound, 11th victory lap long done;
To Junior League your fearful trip, no pennant win will come;

Exult, Anaheim! And ring the Angel's bells!
But I with mournful dread,
Look at the on-deck circle,
Where 5 no more is said.

A drying well for ink-stained wretches like myself, OR, the "Buy a Darn Newspaper Before it's Too Late" Project

Time marches ever onward, but in what direction? Onward to this Brave New World, where bits and bytes equal cash and cachet, and the physical realm has been replaced by the digital cloud?

Is it news anymore that media outlets are shedding jobs? Like the annual stagnation of the Chicago Cubs, the erosion of jobs in journalism continues unabated, the technological waves lashing and lapping at an ever-dwindling shore.

Like the drowning man watching a rope of salvation recede into the horizon, I've watched from afar with the sense of resigned detachment, that some day the same fate would afflict me.

So far, it has not, and for that I am thankful. But as I read the latest story of a media empire crumbling into decay (www.stltoday.com/business/local/article_344cb82c-ce99-11e0-8ca1-0019bb30f31a.html), I can't help but wonder when this will befall all of us veritable ink-stained wretches.

How long before the "hard copy" versions of newspapers are chopped for good? Reasons given will be many, with many calling it one of environmental friendliness, others leveling honestly that it is not all about going green, rather saving green.

That fateful hour approaches more quickly every day, with each Kindle and iPad shipped to stores, and as each App is downloaded.

So, do yourself a favor, and find an outlet for a newspaper, a gas station, perhaps (those still exist, don't they, since they haven't figured out a way to download fuel, well, unless you count electricity). Anyway, tomorrow, or this weekend, or before it's too late, go to a gas station and buy a newspaper. Plunk down one of those worthless dead presidents (sorry George, we really do love yah!) and buy a transportable snapshot of the world.

Feel the pulpy texture in your hands. Wash off the ink that accumulates from lingering on the Op-Ed page as you contemplate ideas put forth in a column by someone who ticks you off.

Clip a coupon or advertisement to serve as a visual reminder of the people who really support their local newspaper, the moms and pops (and the big guys) who pour their hard-earned $$$s into trying to reach an erudite, educated local customer.

Read all about your most recent local community meeting, be it a city council or school board, and learn what happened without having to go to the time and trouble of actually, you know, showing up for it. After all, a reporter was sent there to cover the gathering -- surely it's worth $1 just for the privilege of skipping it.

Perhaps you will be distracted by a fly while thinking about that opinion column. Go ahead and fold the newspaper while the fly dive-bombs your head.
Can your Kindle do that?

Take a swing and smack the fly.
Is there an App for that?

That is just one of the many tangential benefits to newspaper ownership. Everyone should have the pleasure of experiencing these sorts of thrills, so today, by the power vested in myself (D.C., I believe), I have declared Thursday, Sept. 1, National Buy a Darn Newspaper Before It's Too Late Day. Will you participate?


Set aside the screen for a second (OK, after you've finished reading this; you're almost through!), and consider this:

There surely are psychiatric studies underway or that have already been published exploring the ever-widening digital gap between whatever generation the current one is being called and those of us who of an age, ahem, where we can no longer be trusted.

Would you deprive a young child the joy of killing flies with yesterday's sports scores and a half-filled out crossword puzzle? Would you rip from the hands of a wee lad the one tool of violence he or she can legally possess?

And, if nothing else, think about America's animal community: birds and fish everywhere are counting on you.

So, on Sept. 1, buy a newspaper. You'll be glad you did.

A new bridge to the "island"

There's a new bridge to "the island," so today on a trip home, I had to try it out.

"The island" isn't really an island at all. It is the area of land across a small creek from my parent's house, with a much larger creek interrupting the "island" from the large hill beyond it. Trees created the rest of the border defining the land we called "the island," separating it from a large swath of field.

The island, creeks and hills around are where I spent many hours of my childhood, climbing up in a tree house made by my brother, riding bikes, building forts, and clambering through the water, looking for signs of life in the tiny pools of water cut off from the rest of the stream.

During the summer, I'd tend to a tiny garden in the adjacent field, or pick raspberries along the edge of that field, or play baseball with my brother. I'd also blaze trails through the weeds with my mini-bike, carving an outline of the field at 35 miles per hour. In the fall, walnut and hickory trees provided a bounty if I chose to harvest what was there for the taking, racing with the squirrels to pick the crop before they could carry it away. It was a place to get lost, to separate from the world, so in that sense, it truly was an island, an oasis.

During my recent visit, the island resembled little of the place I knew in my memories, the paths to the creek taken over by Mother Nature as she reclaims what has always been hers. The tree house has been long gone, a casualty to 15 years of rot that necessitated its removal, lest it entice a new generation of explorer who would find an unstable, unsafe hideaway.

The biggest change, of course, happened more than a decade ago, when the owners of much of that adjoining land -- which contained the field, the hill and much of the large creek -- sold the land to a developer to make homes.

The field where I once harvested peppers and tomatoes and green beans hasn't been broken by till since the Clinton administration. Four-foot tall grasses provide cover for insects and rodents, and this late spring play host to the chorus of periodical cicadas that has emerged for its massive birth ritual.

The sound of 10 million cicadas -- give or take, I stopped counting -- couldn't drown out the memory of my reaction years ago when the land was sold, and how I retaliated. Just a day before my 19th birthday, I learned that the land had been sold. I was devastated to know that it would be carved up and made into housing sites.

The creek would be bridged, altering the stream forever. Paths that provided the perfect trails for walking most of the year, or sledding in the winter, would be turned into roads. The woods were no longer ours. Never mind that they never were ours; the owners had so kindly allowed us to roam them and use the field for a garden for nearly 20 years, but the increasing age of the six sisters forced their hand. They had to sell, the sooner the better.

When the developer began his work, I looked away; I couldn't bear to see what was happening to "my" woods and "my" creek. After the first phase was complete, I couldn't help but be curious, so I wandered over. And that's when I acted out.

Fliers advertising the new sites for homes were an easy target, and in my anger, I snatched a small stack of them from the rack enclosure, intent on keeping people from moving in. It was a small -- OK, very small -- silent protest that made no perceptible difference, but I couldn't stop myself, on at least three occasions. Most times I left a few, so as not to make it obvious that all were disappearing much too quickly for explanation. They were there for taking, and that's what I did.

Time marched on, and my meager efforts at sabotage failed to affect much change. More than 10 years later, there are still just a handful of homes up on that hill. The woods and creek are irreversably changed, but that happened regardless of my silent protest.

I guess I always understood that it all (the sale, the houses) was necessary, but even today I remain ambivalent about the whole episode. But that's what I thought of today as I walked across the new bridge to the "island."

Jeff's Christmas letter, OR a blow-by-blow account of 2010 in the Starck household

I should be writing out my Christmas cards right now.

Scratch that, I should have written them a week ago.

But Christmas approaches and, though the mail carriers may not be held back by sleet, rain, snow and wind, I am more easily deterred.

Instead of placing my trust in the United States Postal Service, which can't even seem to deliver its own paychecks these days (the deficit this year alone is $4.2 billion), I've taken to the digital realm to disseminate the first annual (and, if you're lucky, last) Christmas newsletter exploring the joys and travails in the Starck household during 2010.


Nobody wants to be that guest who arrives at the party as the others guests are already leaving, but I'm still proud of the fact that, in 2010, I finally joined the digital age.

Readers of this blog (all three of you) might know that I'm referencing the stunning debut of this here corner of cyberspace in late August.
Still in a period of infancy (and lunacy), in just a short time, Starck Reality has notched double-digit readership numbers, the kind of exposure CNN news anchors would die for.

The prospect of baring my soul in some impersonal, bits-and-bytes based world has always been tempting, but it took a summer day and the national pastime to spur me to action.
And, four posts later, here we are.

So what if blogs are so 2005, right? Everybody and their grandmothers have them by now. In a world of Facebook and Twitter, blogs are the MySpace of the social media atmosphere. Blogs are the Pluto of planets, the Billy of the Baldwin Brothers.

The debut of this portal into my brain just means that I'm right on time in adopting technology, if you measure in Starck-years.


Growing up, when new technology debuted, offering covetous features like color on the television screen, or a static-free signal to boot, my family usually took a pass. Too fancy for our liking, I suppose.

Now, I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that our family's first VCR could already be found in the Smithsonian by the time my parents finally bought one.

I like to think that the inauguration of a blog about five years after it is all the rage just seems to uphold a family tradition.


One area in which I was on the cutting edge in 2010, literally, was surgery.

Nothing instills the true value of life like the threat of losing your own, and my third visit to the operating table in six years was memorable and exciting in its own right.

It remains remarkable, though, because my physician did not leave to buy a house, or pack for vacation, delaying the surgical procedure in a way all-too-familiar.


Speaking of the value of life: let us pause to remember another low point of 2010, an event that struck us like the blow from a 2x4 upside the head. 2010 will always to me be the year the family lost its matriarch, Grandma Starck, and there is nothing funny, or sarcastic about that.


As fun and exciting, and sad, as all these events have been, the year might be best summed up in the word "travel."

From jetting off to New York City to Berlin, to Chicago and Boston, and St. Louis a few times, I've put a lot of miles between myself and the earth.

Unfortunately, all of these trips pre-dated the recent re-branding effort by the TSA, which apparently changed its name to Touched in Special Areas, so I haven't had a chance to tell a TSA creep to stay out of my junk drawers.

With business trips planned again in early 2011, soon enough I'll get to enjoy a level of humiliation and invasion of privacy that some folks pay good money to experience.

You can read all about it in next year's newsletter.

Until then, Merry Christmas and have a blessed New Year.

The center is gone

The center is gone.
Perhaps the only way to describe my grandma is that she, and her house, were the center because, for as long as I can remember, "Grandma Starck's" house was more than an extension of home, but the center of our world.

When we were in grade school, Jamie and I would go to Grandma Starck's after school to wait for our dad to come back from working with our grandpa.
Several of our cousins would usually also be there, and Grandma would always have a soda and a snack waiting for us. Dinner would be cooking on the stove, and, if there was a day game, the voices of the Cardinals' announcers would be emanating from the little radio on the counter.

Summertime and the scene replayed, without the pesky interference of school.
We'd play outside, chasing pop-flies, taking turns on the swingset, or riding bikes up to Glaser's store, and when we were finally ready to let the sunlight fade into the western sky without us, we'd return to the house, hunting for dinner, and there she was.

As we grew older, even when we no longer needed to seek refuge there after school, Grandma's house remained at the center.

Sunday meant church, and after church the Starck clan would almost always gather for lunch at Grandma's, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends filling the limited spaces, dress shoes clip-clopping on the linoleum floor, voices rising like a geyser in spurts and bunches.

This scene was replicated on countless holidays, family gatherings and get-togethers, the storyline the same even as the family gained more actors.

Usually a boisterous place, Grandma Starck's was also a place for sadness, for standing together to support each other as we celebrated the lives of passed family members.

She, too, was the center of the family; she was the one who kept the family together, drawing the line in the sand that forced grandpa to drop the bottle for good.

For some people, the house actually was their home: when Jamie and Sam and John and Stacy and Jason needed some place to stay, it was to Grandma that they turned, and were welcomed with open arms.

How lucky we were to have such an anchor, a foundation for this crazy family. I'm going to miss you, Grandma.
Love,
Jeff

Getting political: Gore blasts e-mailers, announces new alternative energy venture

Gore criticizes e-mail users
for ‘carbon copy’ footprint
Plans Second Chakra energy


By Jeff Starck

Disassociated Depress

(TOKYO) – E-mail users need to change their ways, claims Al Gore, chief evangelist of the global warming movement.

The use of the “CC” function in sending e-mail messages is a leading contributor to the phenomenon known as global warming, Gore told reporters at a press conference following a worldwide gathering of global warming action group Keep Our Oxygen Klean.

“It may come as an inconvenient truth, but the wanton use of the ‘carbon copy’ functionality in e-mail messaging has created an untenable situation,” Gore said, at the global conclave. “Those who use the ‘CC’ function, for any reason, are recklessly inflicting harm to our Mother Earth. You may as well stab your momma in the back.”

Between school, work and entertainment, residents of the overdeveloped world use computers an average of 10 hours a day, itself a massive contributor to global warming. But the 230 e-mails that people send daily, on average, is the true culprit.

“I’m sure these messages have filled up your Inbox. Whether it’s racist rhetoric questioning President Obama's heritage, jokes about stupid conservative voters or a chain message claiming Bill Gates will make you rich if you forward e-mails, everyone who uses the ‘CC’ function is to blame,” Gore said.

The harshest e-mails for the environment, Gore said, are those questioning whether global warming actually exists, according to global warming's chief hypocrite, er, messenger.

“I will not let dangerous talk radio spouters like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck defeat democracy and destroy our Mother,” Gore said. “They’re dastardly defiant refusal to accept what we know about global warming is definitely cause for alarm.”

Because talkers like Limbaugh and Beck have millions of listeners and e-mail subscribers, the impact of their carbon copy footprint is multiplied, according to Gore.

But, there’s a simple remedy concerned citizen soldiers in the global warming army can employ to decrease their carbon copy footprint, Gore said.

“As most of you know, all you have to do is list all the e-mail recipients using the ‘To’ function. This eliminates excess carbon emitted using the carbon copy method,” he said.

For e-mail senders that desire a little privacy, the ‘blind carbon copy’ option will also work, Gore said.

“Because none of the other e-mail recipients can see those listed on the blind carbon copy line, the carbon copy footprint isn’t traceable, and thus doesn’t count,” Gore said.

Following the KOOK gathering, Gore returned to his Montecito, Calif., mansion and began drafting plans for a new venture in alternative energy, tentatively titled Crazed Poodle Industries.

Gore said that homeowners who find a way to tap into their "second chakra" can lower their heating bills by half, mostly offsetting the cost of divorce lawyers that would result by engaging in such carbon-saving activities.