The Blues Are Why St. Louis Is A Baseball Town

When you don’t live in the town your sports teams are in, TV viewing becomes one of three things: harder, expensiver or illegaler.

You have a choice. And luckily I’ve got a job that affords me the ability to be able to choose the ‘expensiver’ route for baseball. I pay for the MLB.TV package so I can see all the Cardinals games.

The Blues have been a bit more challenging and I’ve had to go the ‘harder’ route, catching games off the largesse of the family sling box.

Considering neither of these options was even available the last time I didn’t live in St. Louis, my sports situation is 1,000,000 times better than it was. But it’s not totally seamless. There are TV outputs to change, sites to visit, buffering during critical moments, several remotes and even more passwords.

Hashtag first world problems.

But last night? Last night was awesome. Cardinals on Fox Sports 1. Blues on NBCSN. Even had a (seemingly) epic basketball match-up on ESPN. It was going to be an old-school night of STL sports TV.

I guess I thought ‘old-school’ would mean circa January ’14. Turns out it could have been anytime between when I was born and now. The Blues lost when they were expected to win. The Cardinals won, when it looked like they were going to lose.

Same at it always was.

It’s rare to hear a 111 point NHL team that’s currently in 1st place in the Western Conference get booed on home ice. But after the 3rd straight evisceration (2 at home), everyone is a bit restless. Are we seeing a team that’s ready to get to the playoffs where the games mean something again, or are we seeing a team that is on fumes who has already peaked?

Lance Lynn didn’t pitch well. In fact, he labored through 6 innings and gave up 5 runs. He was in line for the loss, until Matt Holliday hit a fly ball that carried just a bit too much for Jay Bruce to catch up to. It was now 6-5 and the Cardinals had pulled victory from the jaws of defeat.

Same town. Same time. Less than 10 blocks apart.

The Blues did what the Blues do. The Cardinals did what the Cardinals do. The why and how this happens isn’t less of a mystery because of what happened. It just further entrenches the notion that the Blues can’t win when it matters and the Cardinals can’t lose when they probably should.

It’s why St. Louis is a baseball town.

We love hockey. But we love winning more. Sorry Blues.

Photo: ThrashingTheBlues