I’m glad to be part of the VEB community
For as long as I can remember, baseball has been my family’s favorite sport. My brother and I played it. Funnily enough, the team I played for when I was in the fourth grade was the Cardinals and we sucked. We were 3-13 that season if I remember correctly.
My older cousins played baseball, and one of them, Timothy, got some legit interest from the Rangers way back when, but he decided to go another route and is a firefighter in the DFW area. My cousins and I inherited our love from our uncles who all played baseball growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Heck, to this day, my mom bemoans the fact that she missed out on playing softball in college because LSU shuttered its program a few years before she enrolled. She’s not a woman who has many regrets in her life, but this is her Uncle Rico moment.
But despite the fact that baseball’s been in my blood, I’ve never been able to fully love or follow a team. Growing up in Baton Rouge during the late ‘90s/early 2000s I could catch Braves games on TBS or Cubs games on WGN, but neither Atlanta nor Chicago ever felt like “my” team.
So baseball, or MLB at least, remained perpetually a background noise league for me. I’d make it a point to watch Opening Day to ring in the season and tell myself “this is the year I follow MLB” and that would last for approximately one inning or two and then I’d carry on with my day (read spring…and summer…and fall).
It wasn’t until I started writing and eventually running the LSU SB Nation page, And the Valley Shook, that I really started following baseball again. The SEC might be a football conference, but deep down LSU’s really a baseball school and as fate would have it, my first time visiting St. Louis coincided with LSU going all the way and winning the national championship in Omaha.
It’s June 2023 and my wife and I take a trip to St. Louis for this work convention of hers. While that’s going on, LSU, behind some guys named Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews, win their Super Regional and advance to their first College World Series in six years. Six years between Omaha trips doesn’t sound too bad, but trust me for Tiger fans that’s an eternity. In fact, I’d imagine that drought between CWS appearances for LSU fans is akin to the Cards missing the postseason these past two years. Anyway, one day later, my wife and I head to Busch Stadium and see the Cardinals come up short against the Giants 4-3. The result didn’t matter though, I fell in love with St. Louis that night. We even bought a Fredbird from a Build-a-bear shop that was inside the stadium and he’s been in my office ever since. For the first time in my life, baseball’s at the forefront in my fandom.
My wife and I lived in Nashville the past five years but moved back home to Louisiana this past summer. But that visit to St. Louis, specifically Busch Stadium, changed something in me and that inspired me to reach out to Scooter to try and get involved with the VEB community. I’m thankful to her for giving me this chance, and for all of those here who have been so welcoming in the interactions I’ve had the past few weeks.
Let’s play ball.