You guys, it’s HAPPENING. Pitchers and catchers report next week, thus ending the long protracted national nightmare that was the MLB off season, aka the “Los Angeles Dodgers Free-for-All-Wallet-Explosion”. For the remaining teams that didn’t spend $437 bajillion on shiny new toys over the winter, this is when they trot out all of the untested AAA guys and last year’s holdovers so we as fans can get a read on who exactly we will be hurling expletives and remote controls at all year long. Don’t remember the name of your starting second baseman or switch-hitting center fielder? Now’s the time to brush up! IT’S GO TIME, PEOPLE. THIS IS NOT A TEST!
As the St. Louis roster travels to Florida, they bring with them a clean slate and a season’s worth of fresh promise on which we can all comfortably coast until at least the second or third spring training game when Sonny Gray tears his rotator cuff and we all walk directly into the sea. It’s been my experience that the Cardinals always suffer their most devastating injuries before anything meaningful even occurs, so I don’t think it hurts to get proactively worked up into a lather. However, we as fans will subject ourselves to this uncertainty willingly and on purpose because we are cold and so very, very bored. Will I be on a strong anti-depressant or other mood-altering therapies by April? HARD TO KNOW.
But until then? So much optimism. Such anticipation!
Last year is behind us and we can now look through an amber colored lens at the memory of 2023 and the suffering it wrought, while simultaneously hoping that all of the problems that saw the Cardinals run out of steam by Opening Day (and spend the rest of the summer flopping around the business backend of the NL Central) have magically vanished into the deep dark night like the ghost of Tony LaRussa.
Did the Cardinals add some depth to the starting rotation? Sure, I guess so!
Has management thrown a renewed sense of confidence behind third year manager, Oli Marmol? Kind of, sort of!
Did Matt Carpenter and Lance Lynn rejoin the team as veteran figureheads designed to inspire some hardcore 2011 nostalgia, hand wringing and pants wetting? YOU BET YOUR ASS!
It’s going to be our year. Probably. Maybe? Honestly, it doesn’t even matter. We get to watch baseball soon. Let’s get weird about it. GO BIRDS!!!
Lindsay Trumbull is a writer, Cardinals fan and Adam Wainwright enthusiast from Muscatine, IA. She previously spent time penning missives for Cards Diaspora. She loves dogs, hates the oxford comma and will not entertain the idea of fruit on pizza DO NOT EVEN ASK.
