As a child, I asked my parents what I’d done wrong when the Cards were called off.
I sat in the middle seat of a green Suburban, surrounded by brothers and sisters.
We were closing in on the stadium.
I rarely went to St. Louis, but sometimes we visited cousins nearby.
Once in a while, we went to a game.
Probably just for me.
My parents didn’t have answers for my cries.
It was just raining.
Had the game begun, I would’ve explored the stadium, fetching foul balls as the players cheered.
I knew it would happen; I would lunge for a line drive.
Perhaps I’d save my mother from a hurdling baseball.
Perhaps I would ever so gently nudge her out of the way so I could get there first.
There wouldn’t be many fans to contend with, I assumed.
But this was Busch, after all, where people stay.
And anyway, we were still crawling toward our exit when the game was cancelled.
I blamed myself.
Perhaps I hadn’t prayed hard enough.
Perhaps God didn’t want me to be happy.
Or perhaps God didn’t want me to witness the late 90s bullpen.
In any case, the Cardinals played the next day.
And my parents decided to stick around and see the cousins for another day.
So we attended the game, after all.
St. Louis won.
But I never got answers for that bullpen.
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