Baseball has been very good to me

I live in a great baseball town.

Just an example from the stats (and baseball is all about stats):

Boston has about 7.9 million people in its SMA, and attendance at Fenway Park this year was 2.8 million.  St. Louis has about 2.9 million people, and at Busch Stadium this year the total was 3.4 million.

And Boston isn't bad.  It's just that we are different here, the Cardinals are a civic asset that identifies us.  In Boston, the Red Sox are great but they probably define the city less than do the Celtics or the Bruins.  The Cardinals were for years the westernmost team and still are the team from just south of Chicago to north of Dallas, west past Kansas City (Oklahomans are big fans) and east into Eastern Tennessee.  It's not just KMOX and its amazing reach, it's all the territory of Cardinal Nation, with stations all over the Midwest.

So tonight there is a deciding game of the World Series, and if the Cardinals win there will be another, all at Fenway Park in front of a crowd that will be... well, impolite.  Boston may not be as bad as Philadelphia, where they toss batteries at the players, but they will show a lot more love for their team that for the sport.  As opposed to the fans here, who applaud when a guy from the other team makes a really good play. 

Whether we win or lose - and it looks like a tough road - the Cardinals will come home to a welcoming city, happy to know that the Winter Warmup for 2014 is less than 3 months away.