Here Come The Cardinals

The home opener truly kicks off another season

There’s nothing like Opening Day in St. Louis. I’m not saying it’s the best Opening Day—I mean, it is, but I think places like Cincinnati have quite the tradition as well—but the pageantry is quite amazing. The packed down, the Clydesdales, the legendary players, it’s a complete experience. (Or, of course, maybe you prefer the understated subtlety of whatever the Cubs did.) We talked a lot about the whole experience last year and even with the blah results of 2023, the home opener is something very special.

I know what the organization tends to request to start the season on the road. Early April weather is unpredictable and they’d rather have more dates in the summer when school is out and the crowds can get larger. However, it just doesn’t seem like the season has started until John Ulett has announced each player to the roar of the crowd.

It also helps that things are going much better after seven games than they were after two.

After two games and three batters, it really looked like 2023 was going to bleed into 2024. Miles Mikolas and Zack Thompson had pitched, let’s diplomatically say “not well” and when they were supposed to be two of the better arms in the rotation, it didn’t leave a lot of room for encouragement. The offense had been almost completely silent. Then, in the third game, Lance Lynn loaded the bases with nobody out in the first and the disappointment, frustration, and angst was extremely high for the fact the club was just in the 19th inning of the season.

Then something changed.

Lynn was able to strike out the next three batters. He kept the Dodgers off the board until the fourth and then the Cardinals offense showed up, putting up five runs. To be fair, the Dodgers helped. I don’t know how often you see an inning that looked like that one:

Walk
Hit by pitch
Catcher’s interference
Sacrifice fly
Single
Single
Balk
Popout
Double
Intentional walk
Popout

Still, when you are struggling, any lifeline will do. It was frustrating to see Ryan Helsley blow the lead in the ninth, something that is worth keeping an eye on, but the Cardinals were able to pull it out in the 10th for their first win of the season. While they didn’t win the next day, Steven Matz put up a lot of zeros and gave them a chance to win.

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That’s the difference, right? It’s not fun when the Cardinals lose but it is more understandable, somewhat less frustrating when you get a good pitching performance out of the deal. After watching last year’s version of the club, who seemed to be blown out of games often and early, getting games where things are close and could go their way is its own sort of relief.

Then the club got two excellent games from Kyle Gibson and Mikolas in San Diego (and a better, if still concerning game from Thompson) and the bats came around, meaning that St. Louis already has as many series wins in 2024 as it did all of the first month of 2023 and get to host a Marlins team that has yet to win a contest. Coming home from a West Coast trip at 3-4 is not a bad outcome in any year, much less the beginning of the one after the worst season in 30-plus years. They won three and had serious chances to win two more. That’s progress.

Plus people are starting to get healthy. Reading the reports I wouldn’t rule Lars Nootbaar out of being a part of the home opener and I’m sure he’ll be activated in the six game home stand at least. Sonny Gray threw a simulated game in Springfield yesterday and will have hopefully just one tune-up in Memphis before returning to the Cardinals, probably in time for him to return to Oakland. I hope he enjoys it, since there’s a solid chance it’s the last time the Cardinals will face the A’s in their….well, not their native surroundings, given their history from Philadelphia to Kansas City to by the bay, but it’s all most of us have ever known.

I haven’t seen much on Dylan Carlson yet, which is a little surprising, and there’s a mention in Bernie Miklasz’s recent column that it’s possible Tommy Edman will need another surgery (which, sadly, seems less surprising). Even so, getting those pieces back only adds to a growing feeling that things may be OK. Not great, but OK.

So fire up the organ. Get decked out in your red (hopefully not 2024) jerseys. The game returns to baseball heaven where it belongs. Now it’s a season.

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I have way too many books downloaded on my Kindle, not to mention the three or four physical copies that I have going as well, and I don’t read nearly as much as I used to, unfortunately. (Doing things like this, #bombsaway, podcasting, etc. seem to eat up my time.) However, a few literary highlights:

I got a copy of Charlie Hustle by Keith O’Brien and thought I’d read a few pages. All of the sudden I am probably halfway through the book. It’s a fascinating, no-holds-barred look at Pete Rose and I think it helps people understand him a bit better. Understand, not justify. There’s no softening of Pete’s edges and flaws in this book.

Also in the baseball realm I heard so much about them that I had to pick up both of Joe Posnanski’s more recent books, Why We Love Baseball and The Baseball 100. I’ve not really gotten a chance to start on them but I know they are going to be great.

In Star Wars, the third phase of The High Republic saga has kicked off. I read the first book, The Eye of Darkness, and now I’m reading through Defy the Storm. Still very interested to see how this all wraps up over the next 4-5 books.

In other writings, I finished up my daily Lenten Star Wars devotionals. You can find them all here.

The podcasts (Meet Me at Musial and Gateway to Baseball Heaven) are cruising right along. This weekend on Musial I’m joined by Kelsey Burd. We were both part of Talking About Birds’ 100th episode but we’ve not spent time talking together and I’m looking forward to it.