Cardinals vs. Cubs

As a Chicago Cubs fan, you have to be there to understand the unique rivalry the team has with the St. Louis Cardinals.\nGreat fans watch the Cubs on WGN from A (Alaska) to B (Belize) and beyond, but to appreciate Cardinals-Cubs, one must go to a game between the two.\nTo be a Cubs fan is to supposedly hate the Cardinals, according to an average outside observer who may know this rivalry as one of baseball's best. After all, there are more banjos than people in St. Louis. After all, St. Louis is a swamp town where the mosquitoes are as big as dragonflies, the dragonflies are as big as dogs and the dogs go to Cardinals games with their husbands. After all, St. Louis has so many one-way streets and simple-minded folks that the city became behind the times around the time it last hosted the Olympics -- 1904.\nThere are two dirty secrets though: \n1. Many women from St. Louis are attractive.\n2. The Cardinals-Cubs rivalry really isn't one, or at least not the blood-feud way we are used to with IU-Purdue, for example.\nWhen the Cardinals and Cubs get together, it's more a celebration of baseball of verdant summer optimism, of pleasant memories and of Harry Caray, who broadcast Cardinals games for 25 years and Cubs games for 16 more in a Hall of Fame career. No matter how either team is doing, games will be sold out and fans of the visiting team will journey to the rival park.\nThat's what makes the recent deaths of Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck and Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile hard to take.\nThey weren't enemies.\nBuck promoted the Cardinals for 47 seasons over the 50,000-watt KMOX blowtorch, so it was eerie when Kile died four days after Buck, because for many Buck helped create Kile in the mind's eye. Without Kile we would have no need for Buck. But soon after there was no Buck, there was no more Kile.\nBuck and Kile could grow on you.\nWhen I first heard Buck growing up, I thought of him as the Monday Night Football and Super Bowl radio play-by-play guy as he worked the games with Hank Stram. Getting familiar with him later on through his baseball work, I began to like his terse style, his nicotine-scarred delivery and his picture-perfect pithiness. His call of Kirk Gibson's game-winning home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series --"Unbelievable … I don't believe what I just saw" -- is a classic.\nWhile I don't think he and Harry Caray hated each other, I think both were insecure -- especially Harry -- about the other's fame during their 15 years in the Cardinals' booth together. Jack was suave; Harry was not. Jack had a college degree; Harry didn't. Jack hawked beer in advertisements; Harry hawked even more beer. Jack was born and raised in New England; Harry was true blue, or should I say true red, St. Louis. Jack never lied about his age as far as we know; Harry aged six years one day after being buried in 1998.\nIn my formative years, I liked Harry because I liked the Cubs, but if the situation had been reversed, I know I could have liked Jack. The important thing, though, was having them both around because it made Cardinals-Cubs mean a lot for baseball tradition and make me feel secure that this was the best game.\nAs for Darryl Kile, he could grow on you too. Of the first six years of his career with the Houston Astros, only one of them was good, and he didn't even carry a full load that 1993 season, pitching only 171 innings. His 19-7 season for the Astros in 1997 -- just prior to becoming a free agent -- seemed like a contract grab.\nThe team that was going to sign him was going to be sorry once he returned to his usual mediocrity.\nHe went 21-30 in the '98 and '99 seasons with Colorado, and mediocrity was now a couple steps up from where he was. Traded after the '99 season to the Cardinals, many thought he would return to the elite level he had achieved his last year in Houston.\n'Yeah right,' I thought. He has had two good years out of nine, so why think he is going to be an elite pitcher? Boy, was I wrong.\nKile did return to an All-Star level, winning 20 games in 2000 and 16 more in 2001 with a lower ERA than 2000. In essence, he had gone from being one of the most overrated pitchers in the game to being one of the most underrated.\nWhen he died in his sleep in his Chicago hotel room the morning of June 22, forcing the postponement of the Cardinals-Cubs game that day, it went against the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry in one way -- the first full day of summer, bright skies, hot weather, buzzing fans, Red Schoendienst stories here, Leo Durocher stories there.\nWhen a tragedy in sports happens, some moron always says the tragedy puts things "in perspective," as if most of us are so stupid that we equate our mortality with winning or losing a game.\nBut I know this: When Kile's death was announced, Cubs fans were there to provide comfort. Then, suddenly, it caught what the Cardinals-Cubs rivalry was all about.