As a sports fan, the end of March Madness is rough. Those first two days of the tournament are unlike anything in sports and then it all comes crashing to an end.
Up next? 162 games of regular season baseball. That just doesn’t usually get my blood pumping like a single-elimination basketball tournament.
But this year is going to be different. The Cardinals are turning this season into a 2006 reunion party and I’m all here for it.
St. Louis opted to bring back Albert Pujols on a one-year contract Sunday night, providing the baseball legend a chance to finish his career where it all started. Pujols spent the first 10 seasons with the Cardinals, where he won two World Series trophies and three Most Valuable Player awards. In that time, he never finished below ninth in the MVP voting.
The move to bring Pujols back feels like more of a fan-pleasing move than a baseball decision. He’s not the same hitter he once was and the 42-year-old was waived by the Los Angeles Angels last year. That doesn’t bother me, though. He’s wearing No. 5 with the birds sitting on the bat across his chest again.
Pujols announced that this season will be his last and it will also likely be the final year for the iconic batterymate of catcher Yadier Molina and pitcher Adam Wainwright, both of whom have spent the entirety of their Major League careers in St. Louis.
Three Cardinals legends going out together. Does it get any more romantic than that?
But this season might be especially difficult for me. These three were my childhood. And in a few months, it’s all going to abruptly end.
Pujols’ first career at-bat came less than one year after I was born. I fell asleep right before his home run against Astros closer Brad Lidge in the 2005 National League Championship Series. After my freshman year of college, I bought tickets for Pujols’ first game back since his departure. Molina and Wainwright closed out the 2006 World Series during my first semester of 1st grade. They’ve both been staples of Cardinals baseball for as long as I remember watching.
I grew up at Busch Stadium with these players. And now an era is ending, for both of us.
A chapter is closing in my life, too. I’m no baseball Hall of Famer or anywhere close to it, but in May, I’ll graduate with honors from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism. For the first time in my life, I don’t really have a plan for what’s next. School has always been a foundation for my life and in two months, it will all be over. It’s hard not to be anxious about what the future will look like, but I’m trying not to think about that.
When the Cardinals take the field for Opening Day on April 7, they’ll be focusing on the present and not what their future holds. So in this final chapter, maybe I ought to do the same.
Max Baker can be reached at max@chathamnr.com and @maxbaker_15.
