Cardinal Nation

The baseball season has started!!   Go Cardinals!

All over Cardinal Nation, from Oklahoma City to Danville, Illinois, and from Little Rock to Iowa City, Cardinal fans are listening, watching, and reading about their team. 

The photo above is from 2008.  My mother was almost as big a fan as my dad. 

We can watch every game on television this year.  (Only a couple of games were not televised last year.)  When I was a kid, we followed the Cards mostly by radio or in the next morning's newspaper.

I easily identified with the family in John Grisham's novel, A Painted House.  They listened to Cardinal games on the radio through the static.  Our house had paint, but I heard many Cardinal games on my transistor radio.  Linda's dad listened faithfully on the radio when she was a little girl.

I have some friends who don't like baseball.  They prefer the face-paced action of basketball or football.  But to me, the pace of a baseball game alternates between "relaxed" and "crazy".  I like to say that since there is no game clock in baseball, time stands still.

Whitey Herzog wrote a book with the title of "You're Missin' a Great Game".  To appreciate the game of baseball, you have to watch the "game within the game".  You have to watch what the fielders do on each pitch, what pitch is thrown, whether the batter is swinging or taking, the length of lead the runners take, and then....when the batter puts the ball in play, the action picks up to the "crazy" level.

I really believe my buddies are missing a great game.  But...I am concerned about what big money is doing to Major League Baseball.