Cardinals fans just know they're baseball's best
By JOE POSNANSKI
Columnist
ST. LOUIS - These here are baseball's best fans. I know this because there's a billboard beyond center field at Busch Stadium that says so.
This little fact -- baseball's best fans live in St. Louis -- was also prominently displayed in the city guide they thoughtfully left for me in my hotel room. And I heard it over the loudspeaker entering Sunday's game against the Royals. And I heard a couple of Cardinals fans praise each other for their general fanhood greatness, even after the Royals beat the Cardinals 5-2 Sunday and took the series.
"Moo!" one said.
"That's right," said the other.
Also, over the years, 1,473 conscientious St. Louis Cardinals fans have been kind enough to e-mail and alert me of their reigning status as baseball's best fans.
So, I do know for certain that Cardinals fans are baseball's best. I'm not questioning this for one minute. The only thing that confuses me is, well, forgive me here, I'm not quite sure how Cardinals fans became the best.
I had assumed it was because more of them go to baseball games that any other city. This seemed logical. But then I looked and saw that the Cardinals are actually fifth in attendance this year, which is good, don't get me wrong, please don't e-mail me, but unless my math is off, that doesn't make them the best.
So, I thought obviously this was just an off year for Cardinals fans. Hey, everybody is entitled to an off year. Harrison Ford has had a few lately. The only thing is, last year the Cardinals were actually sixth in attendance. And they were seventh the year before that.
At this pace, they will be No. 1 by 2007, which is quite good.
Still, the billboard doesn't say, "Looking forward to 2007, when we are projected to be baseball's best fans," or "Always among baseball's top 10 fans." And it also doesn't say "Baseball's best fans in 1987," which was the last time (and only time since 1970) the Cardinals actually led the major leagues in attendance.
So, obviously, there is something more subtle behind this whole "baseball's best fans," title, something that goes beyond those arbitrary and confusing "statistics," which merely show "how many fans show up."
But what? Well, you have to look at other qualities. For instance, there is general friendliness of the fans. I can honestly say that before Sunday, I had never had so many fans came up to me on the way to the ballpark to ask if I wanted to "buy or sell tickets." This shows you the caring nature of baseball fans here.
Then there is tradition. St. Louis is loaded with tradition. Many of the streets, for instance, have been under construction since 1922. Ha ha, just kidding there, I'm sure St. Louis has "construction's best workers," please don't e-mail me.
Fans here appreciate the great traditions of the game, such as singing "Take Me Out To the Ballgame," during the seventh-inning stretch, and also "Big Mac Land," and pretending that it hasn't been 21 years since they won and leaving in the eighth inning and mostly the grand tradition of driving motorcycles around the field before the game.
Yes, Sunday, more than a hundred Harley-Davidsons rode around before the game, making lots of noise and tearing up the warning track. Nobody ever fully explained why they did this, but I'm sure it was a great baseball tradition, dating back at least to Dizzy Dean, and, as you would expect from baseball's best fans, it was heartily done.
Most Cardinals fans will tell you that Cardinals fans are the best because they are the most knowledgeable. They understand the intricacies of the game. For instance, when Cardinals pitcher Cal Eldred walked Royals pitcher Jeremy Affeldt on four pitches Sunday, many of the fans booed. They knew, without anyone telling them, that this was not a good move.
Still, I have to admit, in three games, I didn't notice a whole lot of discussion about the wisdom of a pitcher bunting with runners on first and third. Instead, I saw a lot of people drinking beer. I saw a lot of kids eating cotton candy. I saw a lot of people shrieking after routine pop-ups because they thought they were home runs. I saw a lot of people screaming "balk," when the pitcher faked a throw to second, even though pretty much the first thing they teach you in kindergarten, before even the ABC song, is that it's not a balk.
I saw fans leave to beat traffic. I saw drunken fans stumble into bushes. Sunday, I saw all the people who had not yet left doing the wave in the eighth inning of a close game.
In other words, I saw Cardinals fans acting pretty much like fans in every other city in the United States of America. Now, maybe there was a level of sophistication I just missed. Maybe fewer fans per capita cheered pop-ups.
Maybe I just caught these fans on a bad weekend. The Royals did take two out of three.
Then, that shouldn't matter because Cardinals fans will tell you (over and over and over and over) that they don't consider this Royals-Cardinals thing a rivalry. The Royals don't even show up on the radar screen. My Post-Dispatch colleague Dan O'Neill even wrote a big story in the paper here, along with a huge picture and a chart, all about how this is not a big rivalry at all.
"Quick, name some Royals other than Mike Sweeney... name one!" he wrote. I'm not sure it speaks too well for Cardinals fans' celebrated knowledge if they couldn't at least come up with Carlos Beltran, but I guess the point was that we in Kansas City have a pitifully anonymous team, not worthy of rivalry status.
I guess we're pretty simple out West, because we do consider it a big rivalry. So, maybe these great fans don't care, but we do, and we can note that for the moment, the Royals lead the series, and they have a better record than the Cardinals, not to mention a better stadium and a more recent World Championship.
This weekend, the Cardinals will come to Kansas City. There are two things to remember: One, if you see any Cardinals fans, study them. They're the best, you know. And second, if you have a motorcycle, leave it in the parking lot. Driving on the field is strictly a St. Louis thing.
