Cheering for the Cardinals, spit and all

Sept. 24, 2009

Dear Leslie,

The St. Louis Cardinals may have clinched the National League Central Division championship by the time you read this. I know this news will make you go cross-eyed, but for people who grew up here on the eastern side of Missouri and lots of other places in the Midwest, rooting for the Cardinals is part of our birthright.

My mom and dad hardly ever miss watching a Cardinals game on TV. I'm almost as loyal. "Another ballgame?" DC moans. Yes, I explain often, the Cardinals play almost every day from April to October.

DC doesn't dislike baseball as much as she loathes how often the players spit or that they spit at all. It eased her distaste a bit to inform her that many of them are spitting the shells of sunflower seeds, which have replaced tobacco in dugouts and probably won't kill anyone.

DC doesn't understand that spitting is a boyhood ritual. Put boys together and they'll spit -- saliva, watermelon seeds, anything that can be formed into a missile. Not many generations ago boys chewed tobacco, and knowing how to spit was a necessity. The fact that most boys no longer chew or dip tobacco doesn't mean the ritual has been lost.

Morphic resonance is the term the biologist Rupert Sheldrake uses to describe species-specific collective memory. The theory states that a skill learned by lab rats at one university then can be learned more easily by rats at other universities. "Animals inherit the successful habits of their species as instincts," he says. Boys will always spit and be proud of it.

Those grown-up boys out on the baseball field don't even know they're spitting. They're just playing ball.

My friend Don and I recently took my mom to watch the Cardinals play in St. Louis. My dad preferred to stay home and watch the game in his easy chair, "the best seat in the house." DC preferred to stay home and vacuum.

Our seats were on the fourth level behind home plate. At first my mom was afraid to look down at the field. The top level of a big-league baseball stadium is a vertigo-inducing view. You get used to it.

Mom and Don wore their red Cardinals T-shirts. Along with 45,000 other fans, we shelled peanuts and ate brats and watched the Cardinals come back in the eighth inning to take the lead over the Braves only to give up two runs and lose in the ninth. We didn't' sulk. The game was well-played.

This kind of behavior is explained by "It Happens Every Spring," a baseball movie that came out when I was a boy. An absent-minded chemistry professor accidentally discovers the fluid he is experimenting with repels wood. Since his absentmindedness is directly due to the excitement accompanying the arrival of baseball season every year, the professor immediately realizes this liquid has strikeout potential.

Soon he's pitching for St. Louis Cardinals. His fastball is slow but hops over any swung bat. Suddenly the professor's a baseball star.

The ethical problem with juicing up a baseball would doom a remake, but in the 1950s and 1960s this was just a Walter Mitty fantasy. Not many of us can throw or hit a baseball well enough to play in the big leagues, but all of us can watch and dream.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.