I have to get something off my chest about the 80th Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
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Did you watch it? In case you didn't, the National League lost 4-3, marking
the thirteenth consecutive year the NL failed to win
the most venerable all-star contest in all of professional sports.
And I think it's my fault. Not all thirteen games, mind you; just
the one Tuesday night.
Why?
Well, did you see how
Albert Pujols played? The NL's starting first baseman, top overall All-Star vote getter and consensus Best Player in Baseball went nothing for three at the plate. To make matters worse, he committed an error in the first inning that led to the AL's first two runs.
Yes, Pujols did go on to field his position adroitly before being replaced in the seventh inning, but all told it was an uncharacteristically lackluster performance from the future Hall of Famer, a man who was carrying the weight of an entire baseball-mad (if somewhat
down at the heels) city on his shoulders. And now the American League gets the
home-field advantage --
again -- when World Series time rolls around.
Blame me.
Last Thursday afternoon I got a call from Brian Bartow, the
St. Louis Cardinals' director of media relations. Bartow said the team had seen and loved the
Riverfront Times Guide to All-Star Week,
a special supplement this paper had published the previous day -- all
except the part where we revealed the home addresses of some current
and former Redbirds luminaries.
The players, Bartow said, were particularly peeved, especially Pujols.
So upset were they, Bartow told me, that the ballclub felt it had no
option but to instruct Major League Baseball to revoke the credentials
they'd granted
Riverfront Times to cover the All-Star Game, and to rescind our credentials to cover the team over the course of the regular season.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: Those petty
bastards! How dare they stomp on the First Amendment like that!
No, wait. That's what
I was thinking.
You're thinking:
Serves you right, you puerile little jerk. You disrespect the St. Louis
Cardinals by puncturing the protective halo of privacy around their
players and personnel and you deserve whatever retribution they want to
hand out, and then some.
And you know what? You're probably right. Regardless, you -- and, more
to the point, I -- can't deny what would subsequently transpire:
Pujols, having been anointed the centerpiece of the 2009 Midsummer
Classic and, at least as important, having been tapped as St. Louis'
one-man welcoming committee to the baseball-loving world, only narrowly
avoids being knocked out in the first round of Monday night's Home Run
Derby, then fails to hit the ball beyond the infield on "This Time It
Counts" Tuesday.
Well, the man
is only human. And considering the burden he was carrying, it's no wonder a distraction like the
RFT All-Star Guide might dull his edge.
All I can say is, I never intended for this to happen.
I know it doesn't help to note that in spite of our reputation for
tweaking townsfolk in high places -- including the Cardinals; see Exhibits
A,
B, and
C, and the time we noted that Cardinals pitchers like to go
commando -- we took the high road with the
Riverfront Times Guide to All-Star Week. It was a classy product all the way, covered in shiny paper stock and 60
pages thick, packed with information assembled by our staff about
events and activities, recommendations regarding restaurants and
nightlife, an
essay by
RFT baseball blogger Aaron Schafer and -- the pièce de résistance -- "
Inside Baseball: A tour of St. Louis landmarks, from the famous to the infamous (and everything in between)."
In brainstorming that last element, the tour, I had in mind an edifying
cultural excursion that would take visitors in town for the game around
our fair city and provide incontrovertible evidence that St. Louis is
indeed what we always tell folks it is: a great baseball town. To that
end, Ian Froeb, who put together the tour, penned a history of baseball
as played in St. Louis, compiled lists of great (and not so great) moments at the various local venues where the game has been played, assembled a roster of the final resting places of various local baseball figures, threw in all manner of local baseball trivia and, because I thought it'd be fun, looked up a few of the home addresses of Cardinals personalities past and present, along the lines of those
Hollywood "Homes of the Stars" maps.
It could have been worse. We could have been less lazy in seeking out
the residential scoop. All we did was to go to St. Louis County's
official website, locate the real estate tax database --
http://revenue.stlouisco.com/ias/ -- and search it by owner's name. You type in "
Musial Stan" or "
Hrabosky Al," and up pops an address. You don't even have to log in.
It was clear after Mr. Bartow called that he and the Cardinals hadn't
known how publicly accessible this information is. Still, for days
after we spoke, I dreaded opening the paper or turning on the news,
lest I learn that a crazed mob had accosted Ozzie Smith at his condo or
that someone had burned an
Albert Pujols Fathead™ in effigy on a Creve Coeur lawn.
Of course, what actually happened was quite bad enough, thank you.
You'll have to take my word for it, I suppose, but I'm an ardent
Cardinals fan. In fact, "ardent" doesn't even begin to describe my love
for the team (which, I might add, sucked during the entirety of my
formative years).
What can I do but apologize?
To the Cardinals (and especially to Albert Pujols), to all of the
National League, to all my fellow Cardinals fans, to all my fellow
National League fans, to all my fellow Albert Pujols fans (especially
my sister, who will probably never speak to me again):
I'm sorry.