Now batting...

Welcome to Birds, Bat, Baseball, my blog about baseball and most often, specifically about the St. Louis Cardinals.

There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Like many, my blog is of the zero access, zero privilege variety. But what this site will not lack…is insight.

First, my bona fides.

I make my living with words, but until this point in my life, none have been able to be about baseball. Print journalism got me started, and one too many city council meetings got me looking for a real job. Eventually, I landed one, and now, with a 10^th high school class reunion on the horizon, I have decided I better have something more interesting to talk about than work. A blog? Yeah, that's interesting in my world.

I thank my current employer – no shitting you, an insurance company (R.I.P.F.J.M) – for being cool enough to not unduly restrict my Internet access. It is during these on-the-clock hours I’m able to feed my addiction.

As for my Cardinals credentials, I [insert cliché to replace ‘want to marry’ here] this franchise. My first game was in 1987 when I was 6. It was a night game, Cards v. Phillies, and with rain coming soon, we were forced to leave before the game was over. It was tied 2-2 when Dad and his buddy led me and the other guy's daughter out of the stadium. I was still awake to hear on the radio on the ride home that the Phils had taken a 4-2 lead in extras, which held up for the win.

I was too young to remember the 1982 World Series, to remember without the benefit of video Sutter sealing title No. 9. I was raised on Whitey Ball, the Wizard of Oz, E.T. McGee, Vince and the Astroturf and wide open spaces of Old Busch that made all that fun possible. Jack Clark’s bat gave me some early thrills. Jack Buck’s voice still gives me chills.

I started paying enough attention to really learn the intricacies of small ball, the double switch and what constituted a good running count, just in time for a strike to steal the game’s thunder and Junior Griffey’s chance at history. I was brought back to baseball just before Big Mac and Slammin’ Sammy helped steal back the nation’s heart – while darkening the game's soul.

In the last 10 years, I’ve rarely miss a Cards game on TV, and that’s meant some pretty expensive cable bills as I journeyed from state to state. Even in Missouri, I was too close to Royals country to see the Birds cheap. MLB.tv and KMOX got me through, though. From the cold basement of the house I shared with three strangers, I got to watch a 30-second-delayed version of the Game 6 NLCS home run Jimmy Edmonds set into the night sky on the small screen, constantly interrupted by buffering. My phone rang first so I knew something good was coming, just wasn't sure how high I'd jump when I saw it with my own eyes.

During that same time, I never missed a summer getting to St. Louis or catching the Cards when they were in the neighborhood on the road. From Chavez Ravine to the Valley of the Sun, Wrigley Field to Kauffman Stadium. Even with all those places, I can safely say my Top 5 favorite vacations all happened in St. Louis, Mo.

The pinnacle of my fandom so far was playing witness in the newly christened Busch Stadium III to the 2006 World Series clincher. I drove hundreds of miles without a ticket. I spent more money that night than rent that month to get in the gates and properly toast the good guys’ victory. But there’s nothing in my life outside of my family and friends that I cherish more than the memories of that game. Stay tuned, and I’ll share them with you here soon.

You can be sure with this blog that I won’t let you miss anything vital. But this will not be the best place to check if you just want to read about last night’s game. There are far better sites for that.

I’ll look for the odd angles, the bad hops and the wrong-handed pitchers (apologies to Jim Abbott, no special offense intended). I’ll talk about the people talking about the game, the people writing about the game and of course the people playing it, managing it and those paying them millions of dollars to do it. I’ll write things here you won’t be able to read anywhere else and hopefully piss a few people off and make a few people laugh in the process.

To fully embrace the philosophy here, you will have to get your head around the fact that I may occasionally reference a few statistics “invented” after 1950 that your grandfather – and half the on-air talent at Baseball Tonight – could consider a form of voodoo. And I’ll use my share of salty language.

This isn’t a blog for your grandfather. Or for John Kruk for that matter, although I was a big fan of the big man in his silly-base-running, Randy Johnson-dodging, trading-his-jersey-number-for-a-case-of-beer days.

But it won’t be a blog for baseball’s total stat nerds, either. The simple things in the game still get me excited, and like the funny man in the Miller High Life commercials, I, too, need to smell me a hot dog or somethun’.

I hope this little corner of the Internet serves as an adequate personal shrine to the game and the team I love. True, I'd love for this to become a place where others also come to pay their respects. But if it’s just for me and my immediate Redbird family, that’s cool, too.

To everyone who visits here, I thank you for reading my words and appreciate any you have to share with me.

If it’s baseball you want to talk about, everyone is welcome. Yes, even you Scrubs fans...

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