Before you jump to the comments to demand I turn in my Cardinals club membership, read everything I have to say, and then we can start the conversation.
I began doubting our teams World Series hopes on April 2nd when the Cardinals lost their first game to the Reds 1-0. And then I became convinced they wouldn’t even make the playoffs on April 6 in a 2-1 loss to the Pirates, their first series loss of the season. But all it takes for me to be convinced we are going back to the Fall Classic is another win, which is never too far behind a Cardinals loss.
This seems to be the mind set of many Cardinals fans I meet. The downside to being a baseball fan is when a team slumps, there is often no grieving period after a loss. Like the Cardinals in the past week, dropping two to the Yankees, three to the Giants, and three to the Royals. When the losses pile up, we panic because it is all that is happening at that time. There is no reason we are going to look at the July 11-13 series at Milwaukee, when we are struggling now. Baseball is a different beast than most sports. In no other sport do you play a team three times in a row unless you make the playoffs; and even then it is not on back to back days. The Cardinals played the league best Giants four times and only came away with one win. That worries me more than dropping three to the Royals. I do not judge the Redbirds based on how they do against the below average teams but rather the playoff bound teams. After all, that is who we will see them play in October.
In 2013, the Cardinals played the Pirates in a five game series in July. No, you did not misread that. Sure, technically one was a makeup game but let’s not argue semantics here. Our team dropped four straight, giving up first place in the division and capping off a seven game losing streak. I may have lost a few friends because I was so frustrated that I couldn’t look into October because I just wasn’t sure how they could even get there. Let me remind you that the Cardinals ended the 2013 regular season going 8-2 in their last 10 games and finishing it off winning the last six in a row.
As Cardinals fans, we are so used to seeing the birds win that the losses often come with us all trying to fix the eleven time world champions. “Send this guy down, cut this one, hey so-and-so is on the market, let’s trade slumping (insert current slumping player here)”. This is all normal to me. I do the same thing. We are all doctors trying to do surgery on a scraped knee. The best way I can describe our situation is to compare it to a single football game. This is like being down at halftime by two touchdowns. A hit here, good defense there and all the sudden, we are on the winning side of things, as usual.
There are still plenty of games left, and luckily they are not all against the Giants (and no more against those fierce Royals, thank goodness). So to answer the question posed by the title, we can panic on September 29, if the Cardinals have started the off season.
Photo-vivaelbirdos.com
