by W.H.

It's hard to get an accurate gauge on how fervently St. Louis fans believed in their Cardinals during the long off-season. If one were to poll the comment makers who slum in the lesser regions of the stltoday.com sports section, it would be probable to assume the Cardinals were an organization closely resembling the architecture of the Pittsburgh Pirates' 16 consecutive losing seasons, rather than a superior franchise two seasons removed from a World Series title. In the land of bulletin boards, expectations run high and success must come immediately.

This is not to say there are not things to be upset about. Where once the greatest fans in sports attended the church of baseball, stands a soon-to-be softball field. A place where all of America will gaze their eyes upon on a Tuesday night in mid-July and be thankful that their home cities are run more properly and efficiently than St. Louis. There has also been very little consistency between the front office and the dugout in the Cardinals organization until this spring training. John Mozeliak promised a youth movement last season and Tony LaRussa proceeded to fill out the lineup cards with the likes of Cesar Izturis and Adam Kennedy, as opposed to Brendan Ryan and Jarret Hoffpauir. This off-season over-zealous Cardinals fanboys praised Colby Rasmus as if he were the second coming. LaRussa finally gave into the youth movement and sure enough, Colby was at Busch starting on East Sunday. He is risen.

However, those same supporters who hopped on the Rasmus express to the majors, were potentially straddling the tracks and placing one foot in the Motte or Perez forcloser bandwagon. Bernie Miklasz of the Post-Dispatch observed that these fair weather supporters were the quickest to phone in their resentment of Motte's poor opening day performance to nightly sportstalk broadcasts. It is probable these same fans consider Busch Stadium half empty. To them, Tony LaRussa who's third alltime in managerial wins, is an underachiever. A man who pales in comparison to the eternal glorified memory of Whitey Herzog, who in fact has less wins, a lower winning percentage, and the same amount of Cardinal World Series titles as LaRussa. Assuming all manners of consistent behavior, these same culprits, who were reduced to bed-wetting over the previously mentioned issues, are likely upset that a team housed in a dying industrial city with a dwindling population of residents and corporations, would offend their fan-base by only spending $90 million towards payroll.

What's important to know for the front office's sake, is what proportion these malcontents make up of the entire fan-base. Do these champions of overreaction form a large segment of the Redbirds' market?  Management must bank on the fact that the majority of Cardinal fans are reasonable people who appreciate the quality of the organization's history, and its renewed commitment to competitiveness in the 2000's as compared to the 90's.  They may be correct in assuming that the majority of Cardinals fans remain the best fans in baseball.  But there are large elements who have believe that St. Louis is entitled to a team that spends like the Red Sox or Yankees.  Fans who began this darker era of Redbirds supporting by heckling Tino Martinez, Juan Encarnacion, and Cesar Izturis.  Obnoxious bleacher bums who think it's a superior idea to throw the ball back when an opposing player hits a home run.  Most of America is well aware that it is never beneficial to emulate Cubs fans.


It took this incident for Cardinals fans to care
about Encarnacion. No joke here, it's true

It is the American way to question management.  It is our duty as citizens to hold our governing bodies accoutable for poor desicions. However, the citizens of our great nation have been ignoring our duties as of late.  Is it because we're too busy complaining about baseball?  Is it because the government doesn't have an online message board, for which the public may use to air their grievences?  Overall, fans have become more impatient across the nation.  Whether it's the 24-hour sports news cycle, the inflated cost of attendence, or merely a gradual shift in American idealism, our attitudes inside the ballpark have changed. What happened to the best fans in baseball? They're still there, but for how much longer?