St. Louis Cardinals

Dear St. Louis,

Welcome to the land of insurmountable leads that became surmountable. I feel your pain. My Red were up two games to nothing and only had to win one out of three home games. Fail. Last year my Braves were way ahead with a few weeks to go in the season and lost it on the last day. So, St. Louis, I feel your pain. The pain of losing is greater than the joy of winning. Winning is a satisfying feeling that you know will go away if you don't win the next one. Losing is a gut-wrenching affair that never goes away. St. Louis is all sad now, in spite of the fact that they just won it all last year. There should be some residual joy left over from last year, but that's not how it works. There's just the gut-wrenching pain. St. Louis, if it eases the pain, think of being a Cubs fan. They haven't won since, I believe, 1908. (Cub fans, I admire you're loyalty, but I'm seeing a pattern. You won't win in your or anyone else's lifetime. Sorry.) Most sports have around 30 professional teams. Each year everyone ends up sad but one team. But even listen to that team. In the locker room after they win it all, there is some fool saying, "This doesn't prove anything. We won't be respected unless we win it all again next year." So actually, nobody ends up happy.Why the interest in sports then? I guess that's because there's always next year. We should give up this addiction, but we won't.

OK, two final sports notes. I got to see Justin Verlander's bats. That's right. The only time he gets to bat is if his team makes it to the World Series. This past weekend they had just made three bats for him at the Louisville Slugger factory. They had just been made and were hanging up, ready for shipment.

ESPN came out with a preseason basketball poll. Louisville is ranked #2 and Kentucky is
#3. Go my newly adopted state. (Yes, I recognize the irony of getting excited about this in view of what I've just said about the pointlessness of getting ones hopes up.)