Cute move St. Francis baby turns into Cubs rooter

It's all about the Cubs, baby.

Cape Girardeau's most-watched toddler -- the nameless, diaper-wearing baby on the billboard on Route K in front of St. Francis Medical Center -- has a new favorite team this week and has the cap to back it up.

A Cubs hat went atop the gender-neutral tot on Tuesday, just days after the Cubs clinched the NL Central Division title and eliminated the Cardinals from playoff contention. The hat switcheroo was made Tuesday by Drury Southwest, which maintains the lighted sign.

St. Francis marketing vice president Barbara Thompson, who oversees a hat change almost monthly on the billboard baby, said the first-ever appearance of a Cubs cap was pushed along by hospital CEO -- an unabashed Cubs fan -- Steve Bjelich. The change has caused a few doubletakes in an area brimming with Cardinals fans.

"If the Cubs get eliminated, we've agreed the hat will come down," Thompson said Thursday. "We thought there'd be a few Cubs fans locally, and we had the Cardinals cap up for a month or so this summer. But Steve's hoping the Cubs hat gets to stay up for quite a while."

Yankees fans, you're out of luck.

"Highly doubtful," Thompson said of Yankees headgear. "Once the Cubs are out, we'll probably be ready to move on to another season."

Most of the dozen or so hats featured on the billboard through the year aren't sports-related. Drury Southwest has fabricated hats on hand for all the major holidays -- it even has a beanie for the heat of summer. Thompson said the billboard is a sure-fire attention grabber not just for the fashion, but for the names of newborns at the hospital. Babies' names are programmed to rotate every few seconds, and each stays in the rotation for 30 days after birth.

"That billboard generates a lot of attention," Thompson said. "We've had a couple of calls about the Cubs cap, but more questions than complaints."

Try explaining that to a Cardinals fan.

"I think if you're going to practice medicine, you need to get on the Cardinals bandwagon," said Eric White, a photographer with Joe Craig Photography. "Somebody's made a bad decision there. I don't know if we got a Chicago doctor in town or what."

Guilty as charged, Bjelich said.

"The Cubs have been in a rebuilding stage since 1945, so we had to pay tribute to them winning the division," said Bjelich, who grew up in Griffith, Ind., near Chicago. "Even after I told people we had the Cubs hat up there, a lot of them wouldn't believe me."

Bjelich said a Rams helmet is next up to replace the Cubs cap.

jhall@semissourian.com

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