Viewing baseball from the heart of the country

BASEBALL

Traditionally, if a person liked baseball and grew up in Arkansas, it was hard not to follow the Cardinals.  This piece was originally published in newspapers on May 11, 2016

by David Wilson

St. Louis Cardinal baseball, over the course of its 124-year history, has developed a strong regional appeal that stretches in several states in the central part of the country, including Arkansas.

Part of the reason for that development is that in the earliest decades of major league baseball, St. Louis, as the westernmost team, was geographically situated to capture the attention of most of the Midwest.

It is understood that there is a growing interest in Northwest Arkansas with the Kansas City Royals, especially with their success in recent years, but the Cardinals simply have a longer relationship with Arkansans.

I grew up in Northeast Arkansas, where I learned of Cardinal baseball at a very young age by listening to Jack Buck, Harry Caray, (and later Mike Shannon) do the radio broadcasts of the games.  I was probably three years old when I first remember hearing their voices give the count of balls and strikes on summer evenings.

My dad had the radio tuned to the Cardinal games because it was something he began as a boy living in rural Arkansas in the 1940s.

"We shelled beans and peas and listened to the ball game in the evening," my dad said.  "We couldn't go to bed until all the beans and peas were shelled. We listened to Gabby Street and Harry Caray do the games.  Gabby Street was the one they called 'The Old Sarge.'"

But my dad wasn't among the first in Arkansas to grow up listening to Cardinal broadcasts.  In fact, it began as early as the 1920s when people started getting electricity and their first radio.

As far as Arkansas was concerned the Cardinals were not just the only game in town but the only game in the region.

Two different books by John Grisham (A Painted House and Calico Joe) provide insight in to how people in Arkansas followed the Cardinals and all of Major League Baseball during those decades.

A Painted House opens this way:  "It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a 'good crop.' ''

Calico Joe was about a young baseball player from the town of Calico Rock in north central Arkansas. He made a tremendous impact as a rookie with the Chicago Cubs and one of the subplots was how the people in Calico Rock and the surrounding area had trouble rooting for the Cubs when their hearts were always with the Cardinals.

Of course, the book is a work of fiction, but Grisham captured precisely the feeling of Arkansans about baseball.

Once during a radio broadcast in the 1980s, I remember Mike Shannon talking to someone in the booth who had never visited Arkansas.

"You've never been to Arkansas?" Shannon asked. "Oh, that's great Cardinal country."

And he's right.  For at least four generations, anyone in Arkansas who cared about baseball kept up with the Cardinals.

And they still do.  Even though we live in an age in which one can follow any major league team anywhere (through the modern miracles of the internet and ESPN), the Cardinals remain the main draw throughout the region.

In the heart of the United States, it's a part of our history, a part of our culture, and who we are.

David Wilson, EdD, is a communications director and former high school principal. His book Learning Every Day is available on Amazon.com. You may email him at ledauthor@gmail.com.