RED OCTOBER

As most of you know, I'm from St. Louis MO, was born here, and have lived here most all my life.

There is a strange disease that inflicts itself on this area every few years.  It does not happen every year, but when it does it is highly infectious.  It is known as RED OCTOBER!  For those of you who do not reside in the St. Louis area or even in the midwest, this is a disease you may never have heard of.  No some of you are thinking, well DUH, October is often red, or orange, or yellow, all the beautiful colors of the leaves changing and St Louis is full of those colors.  Well yes in most years you are correct, but every few years we get an extra helping of red.  It is a disease that totally takes over the brain.  Keeps people up late at night, causes extreme anxiousness, sometimes even results in extreme euphoria.  It only lasts about a week or so, but sometimes the effects last thru the winter and on into spring.  It is a very strange disease.

This year we all thought that the chances of catching this disease was very slim.  It appeared that the virus would pass us by and we would not have to worry about it.  HOWEVER the jet stream shifted and the winds changed, and the final days of September turned to October and low and behold, St. Louis had contracted RED OCTOBER disease.  It is everywhere.  You cannot escape it.  IF you even travel thru the city, chances are you have been exposed to it, and will probably catch the fever.

In 1982, it was a highly infectious fever.  It led to dancing in the streets, parades, adults totally acting like children.  It is though this disease affects the brain and totally disconnects it from any kind of common sense.  It has struck St. Louis 18 times over the years.  The 1st time I can remember is 1964.  I just assumed it was something that happened, but while that is what happened that year, it was a couple of years before it struck again.  Out of those 18 times it has struck, it has been really bad only 10 times however this year they are expecting it to be really bad again.

Well before some of you wonder what in the world Im talking about, Im talking about St. Louis Cardinal Baseball.  The RED OCTOBER is because the Cardinals have made the playoffs after being considered out of contention as late as August 25.  They were 10 1/2 games out of the wild card spot, and went on an improbably run of winning games and other teams losing an improbable run of games.  As September came to an end, the Cardinals found themselves in the throws of RED OCTOBER.  St. Louis fans have become like children and have all started dressing in red and making really silly bets with the other team in the final 7 games of the season known as the World Series.  Now the Cardinals had to get past a team that had won 102 games, and another team that really hated the Cardinals, and they had won 96 games.  Yes it indeed seems as though the "baseball gods" are smiling on the Cardinals.  Now they are playing a team, the Texas Rangers, (sounds more like a police force), whom they have only played one other time for 3 games, and only in TX.  The Rangers never had been to St. Louis.  I wonder if they were overwhelmed by all the red?  You hear terms like "Rally Squirell", "Don Tony", "Torty Craig", "Carp", (NO that last one is not a fish!)  Mayors of the 2 competing cities are throwing down bets for things that are synonymous with their particular city.  The governors of the 2 states, MO and TX have thrown down food bets.  Seems as though beer plays a significant part of all these bets.  Texas has only been to the World Series 2 times in its history, while the Cardinals have been involved 18 times, 2nd only the the Yankees.

There seems to be no cure for this fever.  Unfortunately should the Cardinals win this series, this fever will probably last all the way to next baseball season.  Should they lose, it will still linger in the lives of some of the more die hard fans.  Seems as though there is a never say die attitude amongst the Cardinal Nation faithful.  There seems to be no shortage of prognosticators about who will win and in how many games.  I myself and saying the Cardinals in 7, but will accept a shorter time frame as long as the winners come out with the "birds on the bat"!  GO CARDS!!!!