Dave Duncan

St. Louis has always been a great baseball town. Many great players have made it in the city by the Gateway Arch, and many others have resurrected their careers playing in front of the friendliest fans in the baseball universe. From their first World Series win / appearance in 1926 where they beat the New York Yankees, it was on. Now, they have 10 best of baseball awards and 7 more World Series appearance where they came up short.
They've won as recently as 2006, with a team that pretty much couldn't win the division until it inevitably happened (they finished with 17 losses for September - which included a stretch from the 18th to the 29th where they won twice - shades of Philadelphia in 64 and Boston in 78, anyone?). However, with a team that wasn't that great they put it all together. Sure, Albert Pujols was there. Yadier Molina was too, but mostly it was "scrappy" (i.e. short, but tough) David Eckstein (who won the World Series MVP because someone had to), Adam Wainwright in rookie mode, Chris Carpenter, a discontented Scott Rolen, and some guys like So Taguchi, Juan Encarnacion, and Preston Wilson (role players who would soon be cast off). In ending the Tigers absolutely worst to first run in that year of baseball, they made the midwest proud, and life was good again, but since then, they've been squeezed out in much the same way that the Mets were that year when Endy Chavez made the catch only to lose it to 2 things - Yadier Molina hitting a 2-run just enough shot (shades of Ozzie Smith, anyone?) and Carlos Beltran stared at a pitch from Wainwright.
In the end, St. Louis was victorious in the NL and MLB - if not for ability for the fact that Kenny Rogers doctored the ball with a foreign substance and the universe went against the Tigers.
Perhaps it made up for a loss to Boston in 2004 when they went out 4 games to none after the GREATEST COMEBACK IN SPORTS HISTORY. That year was Pujols, a horrible swinging Jim Edmonds (worst swing in baseball history, but damn... that glove was beautiful), and a resurrected Larry Walker brought over from Colorado with tremendous fanfare for the days past (shades of Roger Maris, anyone?).
And maybe this year is another version of 2006. The pitching staff doesn't feature Bob Gibson or anyone like him, but damn... Kyle Lohse, Jaime Garcia, and Kyle McClellan don't want you to tell them that. Carpenter definitely isn't himself. Wainwright isn't even with the campaign, and still, the team is in 1st again. You've gotta love Dave Duncan. He takes a pitcher, makes him the best that he can possibly be, and the Cardinals fans just love them and make them 100 times better than they could be on any other team.
Look at what they did to Lance Berkman! That guy was written off, and now... he's dominating. Look at Matt Holliday! He's more productive than the best player in baseball (Pujols) - at least for now. They're making Stan Musial proud. They're living up to the legacy of love that McGwire brought out of the fans in those glory years (I still remember what it was really like - not what the asshole commentators and baseball revisionists want you to think of it).
St. Louis was and is a great baseball town.
Unless the Reds bring their A-game and their hatred and their imaginary feuds and player posturing, the Cards will be playing in October (and let's just say that we don't believe in Cueto, Volquez, or any other pitcher on the Reds).

Curse of the Billy Goat

In 1958 and 1959, he was the MVP for the National League, but he still couldn’t keep the Cubs’ hopes for ending the Curse of the Billy Goat alive. During those 2 years, he averaged 46 home runs as a shortstop in a time before guys like Alex Rodriguez, Cal Ripken, Miguel Tejada, and Nomar Garciaparra were redefining a position that guys like Mario Mendoza had held down “effectively” in defensive capacities while hitting .215 and 4 home runs over a career that lasted from 1974-1982.
For that matter, from 1978-1996, the great Ozzie Smith who did hit a defining playoff home run where fans were allowed to go crazy afterward, had 7 seasons where he didn’t hit one home run, and other than his "slugging" year of 1983 when he hit 6 home runs, there was never another year like that as he never got more than half of this total. In aside, Smith should be glad that he didn't do that in 2001 when he would have been investigated for steroids. Of course, the Wizard could do summersaults and stop sharply hit grounders up the middle while channeling programming messages to future ESPN Baseball Tonight programmers that stated the importance of the “web gem,” but Ernie Banks was a guy who could do it all. He had personality, he had life, he had a hot bat that could drive in serious runs and hit for a more than respectable average, but he had no World Series rings.
Despite Banks having a total lack of October experience, he did have one thing other than the fact he made the All Star team for 10 of his seasons and hit 512 home runs over his career. That thing that made him stand apart in the history of baseball was a catch phrase: “It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame. Let’s play two!”
And here we are at the start of the season and my two ballgames are the two fantasy teams that I will take to the finish line: the Ephrata Fighting Amish and the Amish Paradise Green Dragons.
All the same, neither is as memorable as the real game that will be taking place at Fenway Park for the first time since the Cubs lost the 1918 World Series to the Red Sox. In a game that someone had to win, much like the Rangers and the Giants in last year's World Series, the Red Sox, the dominate team of the 1910s, took the series from the Cubs and added another year to their championship drought, which had just moved to a decade since Merkle's Boner.
So will this be a sign that the Cubs are going to move past evicting some stinky farm animal and his uncouth owner who would have even dared to bring him into the park? Will this be the year that Steve Bartman's soul can rest in peace and he finally is forgiven for interfering with Moises Alou's catch in foul territory? Can he come back from his purgatory? Can the Cubs gather round all of their great players from the past and let them cry as the drought ends? Will the real live Ryne Sandberg get his opportunity to guide the team to the crown or will he be passed over yet again? Will fans make peace with Sammy Sosa's corked bat and steroids use enough to let him come back to a late 1990s love fest all over again? Can Rick Sutcliffe's pitching arm slap the new look Cubs on the back? Would Ron Santo walk back onto the field like he did before diabetes claimed his legs, and if he did, would he walk in with the ghosts of Mordecai "3 Fingers" Brown, Ed Reulbach, Tinker, Evers, Chance? Would they recognize Starlin Castro, Aramis Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano, Geovany Soto, Marlon Byrd, Kosuke Fukodome, and Alfonso Soriano?
Is this the year that Billy Williams gets to come back with Leon Durham, Greg Maddux, and Fergie Jenkins, the Cubs greats of the past, and speak about what could have been and be applauded for being there for the 102 years of sadness?
Can Harry Caray finally rest in peace?
When all is said and done, will Charlie Root bring his fastball and throw it at the effigy of Babe Ruth set to go on the bonfire at the center of all that is more than a century of sadness in Wrigleyville?
Not if the new look Red Sox have anything to do with it... but here's hoping from the heart of a baseball fan.