Baseball is the best when its the Cards

There's a line in the movie "City Slickers" where the weekend cowboys are sitting around a campfire talking baseball. One character says that when he was a teenager, he and his father had nothing to talk about except for baseball. "When we couldn't seem to communicate about anything else, we always had baseball."

I never had that communication issue with my father but we, too, had baseball. And we still do. We argue constantly over the Cardinals and the Cubs. He hates LaRussa and thinks Eckstein is a sissy. But it's all in jest. I guess it's a guy thang!

The truth is, I love baseball. Make that Cardinals' baseball because I rarely follow much in the game outside of the Redbirds. You can only imagine the pleasure I find this time of year if the Birds advance in the playoffs. There's football and hockey and even basketball under way but I couldn't care less. I tire quickly of football and basketball. I don't consider hockey a sport. Any action on skates and ice surely is not a sport, except in Canada.

I love the game of golf but find myself following Tiger's exploits and little else. But that leaves baseball.

I know some people find sports of any description as somehow below them. Others lack an understanding of the game and therefore don't follow the action. And that's OK with me. I don't follow soap operas on television because I, too, have a lack of understanding. That's what makes the world go around.

But tonight - and hopefully for the next couple of weeks - I'll live and die with the Cardinals. I'll repeat for the umpteenth time my first visit to old Sportsman's Park, which was replaced by Busch Stadium which is soon to be replaced by new Busch Stadium. I'll root every time Pujols picks up a bat and marvel at Carpenter, Mulder and company like they were members of the family. And for a brief period, maybe they are just like family.

Baseball is still the great American pastime. Maybe more people watch Nascar or the NFL. It will always be baseball for me.

Maybe it started way back in school here when the teachers would bring a television - black and white, of course - into the classroom and allow us to watch the World Series. Somehow that put baseball at a different plateau. It made it special then and it continues to be special today.

We in this area lay claim to the Cardinals. They are "our" team geographically and emotionally as well. We bleed Cardinal red around these parts and if you don't like it, move to some foreign country like Chicago.

Sports is a business and today's team may well not be the team of tomorrow. But for one brief season, from spring to fall, we can follow our heroes. We relish their successes and are pained by their defeats. For that brief period, they become a part of our lives.

And so tonight, from some comfortable setting, I'll be playing baseball in St. Louis. And for a kid who followed Wally Moon and Vinegar Bend Mizzell, little will have changed.