Cardinals

If you're an Eagles fan, that word, Cardinals, is very fresh in your mind. For Philadelphia fans, as with sports fans everywhere, there are team brands and logos that just incite passion, get the juices flowing, turn your normally rosy complexion downright tomato-ish. To most baseball fans the Yankees do the trick. To most Yankees fans, the Red Sox or perhaps Mets, or both, stimulate the negative ions. For most normal football fans, the seven-letter word Cowboys does it.

Yes, it's a time-honored tradition to have a team you hate if you're a real sports fan. Of course I despise the Cowboys, dislike the New York Giants, and have a problem with the New York Mets (although the more they choke the easier it is to like them, kind of like a mangy dog that lives at the corner ballfield). But the team I despise, no, hate most in all of sports is the St. Louis baseball Cardinals.

Now, some will read that last and wonder why I needed to insert "baseball" into their moniker, and I'll explain that shortly. But why do I hate the Cardinals so? Well, the Cowboys are deliciously in a self-imposed decline due to a deluded and dysfunctional owner. The Yankees have become irrelevent from over indulgence. The Cardinals meanwhile make smoke come from my ears just at the mention of their name. Here are but a few of the reasons:

1964
Curt Flood
Richie Allen
Mark McGwire
Scott Rolen
Tony LaRussa
Budweiser
2006

Do I have to explain each of those? Okay, I will.

The epic Phils collapse of 1964 was crowned by the Cardinals stomping on our graves and taking the NL pennant. The initial scar on my heart was chiseled deaper by watching the Cardinals celebrate, as we contemplated what had just happened in a blur of 12 games.

Then, the Richie Allen fiasco ended in Philly with our first black superstar and perhaps potentially the greatest homegrown player ever in Phillies history finally leaving after five very contentious years to go play for the Cardinals (if only for one year).

The Curt Flood mess followed, unfurling itself as Flood refused to accept a trade to the Phillies. This unleashed what ultimately became free agency in baseball. We ended up with Willie Montanez but the slap in the face that this series of events represented was very difficult to accept for a teenaged Phils' fan.

We got them back slightly by pilfering Steve Carlton for my then-favorite Phil Rick Wise but many years later the addition of Mark McGwire, the ultimate baseball fraud, and the movement of Scott Rolen, the ultimate baseball whiner, from the Phillies only piled on the tarnish and stirred my hatred for that club.

But the real crux, the true reason I despise that franchise is Budweiser and what it has meant to that team, and how it has built a fraudulent reputation for them and their fans, AND how that reputation has been used to denegrate Phils fans in particular.

Did I lose you? Well, let me go back to the St. Louse baseball Cardinals reference. You do realize that the Arizona Cardinals used to reside in St. Louis? So, in those days it was necessary to specify which Cardinals team you were referring to, similar to how it used to be in New York when they had both a baseball and football Giants team. So, what happened to the football Cardinals and why aren't they in St. Louis any longer. And while you're at it, what ever happened to the old NBA St. Louis Hawks? Where am I going with this? Well, there's this very popular notion, especially in baseball, that St. Louis is the holy grail of fandom, that St. Louis houses the best baseball fans and that they contrast us, Philly fans, with their loyalty and upbeat attitudes. I say BUNK! I say, give them our 130 years of futility, more than 10,000 losses, corrupt and inept management and then let's see how great a fanbase they are. Let's see how great and loyal they are now that Budweiser is no longer an American company. Let's see what happens when their beer money isn't flowing into the club like it used to and the commitment to winning isn't quite as fervent as the commitment to profits flowing back to Holland. Likely, the same end that the St. Louis football Cardinals and Blues met, GONE, BAM!

No, this notion that Cardinals fans are somehow superior to ANY other baseball fans is a fraudulent and as media contrived as the notion that the Cowboys are America's team. It’s easy to be “great” fans when year after year the money flows and management demonstrates a true commitment to winning. My biggest desire as a baseball fan is to see the demise of the St. Louis Cardinals.

I know, I know, such a negative desire can’t be healthy…. Did you hear, the Cowboys are moving to Las Vegas and changing their name to the “Slots”! Yea, I thought so, you’d love to see that too, wouldn’t you?