Baseball's Fans

Baseball is America's Pastime......right? I was at the Cardinals - Mets game on Wednesday night and the Cards rolled to a 5-2 victory. It was a rather uneventful game with no home runs or that many big plays. The Cardinals pitchers did not even strike out a Met hitter the entire game! But what struck me was, of the 15 to 20,000 that attended the game, the crowd seemed so lifeless. There was scattered applause for an RBI triple by 3B Joe Thurston but not the usual eruption you would expect from a crowd in such a heavily baseball town as St. Louis. The only hints of that type of a crowd reaction was when Albert Pujols hit two different fly balls in almost the same spot, on the warning track in left field, in the 1st and 6th innings. Does it have to be Pujols? Does it have to be a home run? I was dissapointed by the crowd and the performance on the field. All the players seemed to be in slow motion. Pujols was 1-4 with a sac fly and a RBI single. At least he had 2 RBIs, and he added a stolen base after his single. Ankiel was 0-4 with 2 SOs. Ludwick came in to pinch hit in the 7th with the bases loaded and grounded weakly back to the pitcher. The major contributors were the newbies. Rasmus goes 3-4 with a double, Thurston went 2-4 with an RBI triple and added a couple of nice defensive plays, but the only "classic" Cardinal to manage anything at the plate was Yadier Molina with 2 singles! Skip Schumaker was 1-4. The only reason the Cardinals did not lose the game was but for the amazing pitching performance by Joel Piniero. He went 8+ with 6 hits allowed, 0 SOs, and 2 BBs. He gave up 1 run when on the mound in the 2nd and was responsible for a 2nd run that crossed the plate in the 9th. He was the only impressive player on the Cardinals last night. What is happening to America's Pastime? Is this how it ends? The main story on SportsCenter is the NFL Draft on the night of Opening Day? This is not right.