It's a Cardinal nation, indeed

ST. LOUIS -- On a clear summer night, a trucker can pass through West Virginia or a small boy can cradle a transistor radio beneath the blankets in Oklahoma and hear Mike Shannon pleading to the baseball, "Get up, baby! Get up! Get up! Home run Cardinals!"

And both are probably cheering. In the wide open spaces of the Midwest, in small southern towns, in dusty western outposts, the St. Louis Cardinals are every bit as beloved as they are in the shadow of the Anheuser-Busch brewery or the Gateway Arch.

Check out the cars, minivans, buses and pickups surrounding Busch Stadium on the day of a game. Dotted among the Missouri and Illinois license plates will be those from Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas and other places far from St. Louis.

Jerry Grossart, 67, in town for the World Series from Kearney, Neb. He vividly recalled being smitten by the Cardinals.

"It was 1946," Grossart said Wednesday inside the Cardinals Hall of Fame, across from the stadium. "I was a little boy. The Cardinals played the Red Sox in the World Series. I got hooked on the Cardinals then, and I'm still hooked."

Baseball is a near-religion in a handful of American cities. This World Series happens to feature two of them -- Boston and St. Louis. And just as the Red Sox draw support from all of New England, the Cardinals are clearly the choice of fly-over country.

Busch Stadium may not hold the allure of Fenway Park, but for those who arrive from the Badlands of South Dakota or the hills of Tennessee, it's sacred ground -- the place where Gibby struck out 17 Detroit Tigers, where the tarp nearly ate Vince Coleman, where Sammy hugged McGwire after No. 62. It's where Jack Buck, his voice shaky from Parkinson's and emotion, read the poem that helped heal the nation's psyche after the terrorist attacks.

The wide-ranging fan base is driven in part by geography, in part by a quirk in broadcasting airwaves -- and it helps that the Cardinals are generally pretty good.

For years, the major leagues included just 16 teams -- eight in each league, and most of them on the East Coast. St. Louis was, until the late 1950s, the southernmost and westernmost major league city.

That began to change when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated to California. Soon, teams sprouted in Kansas City, Houston, Atlanta, Florida, Denver and Arizona.

Still, especially for many older fans in faraway places, the Cardinals remain their team.

"The Johnny-Come-Latelies are Cubs fans or Royals fans, but for guys my age, it's the Cardinals," Grossart said.

The wide-ranging fan base was helped along in the pre-television days by KMOX, the powerhouse AM radio station that has long been the voice of the Cardinals.

In the 1920s, KMOX and a handful of other stations were granted the right to broadcast at 50,000 watts. In the days of radio's infancy, the government wanted to make sure that all of the nation could hear at least one station, in part to help ensure that word could spread in case of emergencies, KMOX general manager Tom Langmyer said.

That powerful frequency allows the station to be heard in 44 states at night. Especially in the years before TV, baseball fans west of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon line tuned to 1120 AM.

For a quarter of a century, they listened to Harry Caray chirp a joyful tune -- "The Cardinals are coming, tra la, tra la" -- when the team would surge. They spent a half-century listening to Buck, who punctuated every Cardinals victory with "That's a winner."

They've listened for more than 30 years to the ever-optimistic Shannon, joined for the past two seasons by Wayne Hagin. Fox's top baseball and football play-by-play man, Joe Buck, worked alongside his dad at KMOX. NBC's Bob Costas began his career at KMOX and has called Cardinals games.

"I've done numerous interviews with people who say they can remember sitting with mom while she quilted, or with their families at dinner, listening to Cardinals broadcasts," said Bob Krizek, a St. Louis University professor and expert on baseball and the American culture. "There are many people today who listen to Cardinals broadcasts on the radio and turn down the TV sets. It's still a tradition."

Jeff Ripper, 40, of Cocoa, Fla., in town for the Series, recalled sneaking the radio under the covers as a child, listening even as static interrupted Buck's gravelly voice.

Adding to the team's allure is its success -- nine world championships and 16 National League pennants, both second only to the New York Yankees.

Older fans talk about the rambunctious "Gashouse Gang" of the 1930s, or the Stan Musial-led champs of three straight years in the '40s. For the middle-aged, the golden years were the 1960s, when "El Birdos" won two titles and three pennants behind fierce Bob Gibson and fleet Lou Brock.

Younger fans get chills when they hear Jack Buck's "Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!" call of Ozzie Smith's homer to win Game 5 of the 1985 NL Championship Series.

Now, after a 17-year absence, the new generation shows up at World Series games wearing replica jerseys of their murderers-row heroes -- Larry Walker, Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds.

And the passion continues.

"I see a lot more families and little kids at ballgames in St. Louis than I see elsewhere," Krizek said. "I think that continues to build the fan base. You have people who just live and die by the Cardinals."