The Cardinals: The Fans\' Choice
By WILL LEITCH
Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
October 22, 2004 11:09 a.m.
Larry Walker has played major league baseball since 1989, hit 378 home
runs and once even volunteered to play for the Canadian national team, which
is insane even though he is, in fact, Canadian. Considered one of
baseball\'s most respected stars, he turned down countless trade requests from
contenders wanting to get him out of Colorado, citing his no-trade
clause and love for Denver. Until this year, when the St. Louis Cardinals came
calling. Walker, a family man, extremely popular in Colorado, reconsidered immediately.
"My wife had a lot to do with it," he said. "I told her about it, and she
started crying before I even said yes." In his first at-bat, Walker received
a standing ovation. He struck out. He then received another one. "It was amazing," Walker said.
No city in baseball, perhaps all of sports, loves its team more than St.
Louis loves the Cardinals. Even more, no team in sports succeeds because
of its fans. Much has been written about the competitive economic disparity
in baseball, how small market teams like Kansas City can\'t compete against
major metropolitan areas. But look at the two cities\' estimated
populations as of July 1, 2003:
Kansas City: 442,768.
St. Louis: 332,223.
The Cardinals do not have their own cable station. They do not have
owners who made billions selling their dot-com. They are building a stadium
with their own money. They have the seventh-highest payroll in the game
despite having fewer people than Portland. Why? Because of their fans. Busch
Stadium has passed the three million mark in attendance six times in the last
seven years, the team\'s merchandise sells better than every team\'s but the Red
Sox, Yankees and Cubs and the team is regularly one of the top draws on
the road as well. Without such devotion, the Cardinals are the Royals. The
fans are devoted enough to offset the economic shortcomings.
Cardinal fans do more than just fill the coffers, though. St. Louis GM
Walt Jocketty has built the current team (the best in two generations) not by
the draft, or by free agency: He has built it mostly through trades -- and
it is one thing to trade for a player; it is another to convince him to stay,
often for under market value. Enter the fans. Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen
and Jim Edmonds came to the Cardinals right as they were approaching free
agency; all it took was one week in a Redbird uniform for them to sign
long-term deals. The second day in uniform, Edmonds was asked about the
Cardinals fans and said, "I want to kiss the ground every day for having
come here."
And the fans support their Cardinals no matter how they\'re playing. They
are not fickle; just loyal. How long do you think a tortured soul like Rick
Ankiel would have survived in New York or Boston? Five wild pitches in a
postseason game? A complete meltdown on the grandest scale? They would
have set him on fire -- at best. In St. Louis, he was never booed or blasted
on talk radio. Fans were actually worried about him. After a three-year
sojourn in the minor-league and rehab wilderness, Ankiel returned in September
of this season. Hard feelings? Of course not. He received a deafening
standing ovation in his first game back, an ovation that took so long the umpires
actually stopped the game.
In an age when fans constantly complain about out-of-touch players and
an excessively corporate atmosphere at the ballpark, no team is more
connected with its fans and no team\'s fans have more power than in St. Louis.
The Cardinals are the company in a company town.
And now they\'re in the World Series, and it occurs to me that this essay
has been far too logical and sober. This is a team that has gone through
heartbreak (the in-season death of Darryl Kile in 2002; the loss of
legendary broadcast Jack Buck just a week earlier) and has emerged
triumphant, while being underestimated by the rest of the world, who
were all agog over their Fuzzy Cubbie rivals to the north. The Cardinals are
everything that is right about America: modest, professional (watch
Rolen when he hits a home run; he just puts his head down and runs to
first, just punching in, doing his job) and based in the fundamentals of hard
work and rock-solid consistency. And not a single player on the team has hair
that looks like a Simpson\'s character.
And that\'s not to mention Albert Pujols. I mean, have you seen that guy?
So ... For Willie McGee. For Jose Oquendo. For Glenn Brummer. For
Darrell Porter. For Darryl Kile. For Jack Buck. Go Cardinals. That\'s a winner.
Go crazy, folks.
