Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Being Terrible Is The Least Fun Thing You Can Be


Good grief, we suck at baseball. We are 7.5 games back and in last place. In the NL CENTRAL. I don't really even know what to say except that AT LEAST we aren't the Yankees. What kind of crap is this anyway? The Brewers have the best record in major league baseball. It's like we're living on a different planet or something. Not that Milwaukee doesn't deserve their day in the spotlight. Like I've marveled before, they have a guy named Prince Fielder on their team. And a contraption like this. No hard feelings! However, as I've settled into being a Cardinals fan over the last couple of years here in the Windy City, I'm used to consistently solid performances from my Redbirds. You cannot argue that over the last four years this is BY FAR the weakest team we've put on the field. You can blame the starting rotation, you can blame the sorry offense, you can blame almost anything. The fact still remains that as a fan, I have unrealistic expectations for the team that won the World Series last fall. As dynamite as they performed, it was a surreal turn of events that on any given day cannot be duplicated. Which quite frankly, hurt us in the long run. Winning it all last year made our stock skyrocket. This in turn, ensured that key players like Jeff Suppan got swept away in ginormous contracts. No complaints here about that whole experience, but having a transitional team win the Series is like having a bunch of sober jerks win a beer pong competition. They may perform well now, but once the hangover kicks in it becomes clear that they are not the proper caliber to project their success into the future. We are royally screwed.


Anyhow, enough abstract analogies. I obviously realize the team is struggling with the loss of a teammate and a friend. Thinking about it in the context of my own life, I cannot imagine how any of those guys can go on the field and give a crap about whether or not they turn a double play. I give them credit for having the stamina to show up at all. If it were me, I'd be in the fetal position on my bedroom floor. It is because of this I cannot make fun of any given play in any given game over the last three days. In the truest sense, I can't imagine baseball is the most important thing to these guys right now. Honestly, that's okay with me for now. I just hope they can clean it up and be competitive enough in the coming months to compensate. If not, this will continue to make up for it time and time and time and time and time again.

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