Rain Must Fall
The Worst Cardinal Losses Between 1996 and 2016
A brief interlude in the publication of our Fourth Issue to preview a series of essays starting next week!
“Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall
Some days must be dark and dreary.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Rainy Day”
***
Twitter makes everything worse. Especially baseball. There is supposed to be beauty in the fact that a baseball season is 162 games long. This is not football. One loss does not derail a season. But on Twitter, where information is disseminated immediately, there is no time for patience. Instead, we are asked to live and die with every pitch. Each win, each loss is a referendum. It is, quite simply, the antithesis of baseball.
Every other month at Portion Under Busch, we have a theme and a series of short essays to follow. October was Cardinal Killers; December was Making a List, and February was supposed to be moments that reminded us why we love the team.1 April’s theme will look at some of the worst losses the Cardinals suffered between 1996 and 2016.
They were tough losses and sometimes they were a microcosm for why a particular Cardinal team struggled in a given year. More than anything though, I hope this month’s retrospective reminds us, while winning is wonderful, it’s ok to lose too. Because while Longfellow pointed out that every life includes rainy days, he also reminded that:
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining
Each Monday and Friday (starting April 7) we’ll re-live a bad loss, specifically
April 11: Game 3 of the 2014 NLCS
April 14: Game 4 of the 2015 NLDS
April 18: Game 3 of the 2009 NLDS
What games are we forgetting? What do you think was the worst loss you saw between 1996 and 2016?
There was a little art work snafu which has been sorted out, so maybe those essays can be printed in May.