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The Cardinals and Scottie Pippen

I grew up in Central Illinois, just north of Peoria, in a little town called Chillicothe. It was a big baseball area and the fan lines were drawn between the Cubs and the Cardinals. It was almost as if the AL only existed to get beat in the All-Star Game and then play in the World Series. My family was a die-hard Cubs family. I liked to tell people, once I got to college and beyond, that where I grew up you rooted for the Cubs or the Cardinals and my Dad brought me up right. Yes, there as quite a bit of playful animosity between the two fan bases since they were rivals, but other than 1984 when the Cubs finally went to the playoffs after 39 years, the Cardinals ruled the rivalry. As I have grown older the “playful” part of the enmity has gone by the wayside. It’s nice to have a rival – I’m a huge Bears fan and we hate the Packers, but I respect loyal Packers fans – but there is an underlying issue that has been bothering me for a while….and I think I might have stumbled across some reasons as to the purpose of this enmity.

Let me go back to my Little League days to help explain my theory. I LOVED Little League. After Valentine’s Day I would get the itch for practices and bug my Dad about signups. I lived for the summers when I could play all day and all weekend. My birthday was in the middle of August, which doesn’t seem like a big deal at first glance, but my parents started me in school early. I was always the youngest person in my class. As the related to Little League, I hardly even played with my classmates. Most of my teams consisted of guys who were a year behind me in school. I also had an older brother, two years my senior, who played as well. I always watched and studied my classmates and my older brothers teams and noticed a few interesting tidbits.

I can’t explain it, but there was always one guy who was far and away the best player. Usually, this was the guy who matured the fastest and therefore could throw faster and hit it further than the rest of the team. Two names stand out for me, Bill Akright and Dana Bannister. Both were absolute flamethrowers who scared the bejesus out of any little kid, like me, who had to face them. Now, I’m not tooting my own horn, but I was a pretty good ball player. Never the first pick, but I considered myself a dirtbag who would do anything to win. Consequently, there were times where I got called up to the leagues above me to substitute for missing players. A very cool reward…unless I ended up having to face Akright or Bannister – then it was just making sure I didn’t piss down my leg as I walked to the plate.

A little about me: yes, I was a scrappy ballplayer, but once boys got to the age where physical things started to happen, I stalled. To say I was a late bloomer is a gross understatement. Let me put it plainly for you – the day I graduated high school I was 5’3” tall….and I had grown about 3 inches the last nine weeks of my senior year. Make sense now? I digress. When I played Little League these giants throwing BB's at what seemed like 100 mph scared me to death.  I didn’t back down but I was never hugely successful when I got called up. I liked playing with my own age group. Again, there was always the easy first pick for any coach putting together any of my teams. After that though, it got interesting. After the mega-starts were a lot of really good ballplayers. At the time, I liked to fancy myself as one, but who knows how they looked at me. These guys were so close in talent that the position they chose could make all the difference in the world in getting noticed. My brother is a great example of this – he was a catcher (I was too, but also played the other positions up the middle of the field in 2B and CF) so he set himself apart. Was he the mega-star? No. But he was a really good player who played a vital position. One thing that always bit me and my brother in the rear in Little League was that we didn’t play the political game. We didn’t toot our own horns and neither did our Dad. Our play would tell the story. I understand that choice.

So how does this all this relate to Cubs and Cardinals fans? Let’s connect the dots. There were three major types of players in Little League – the mega-stars, the really good players who had to be political to get ahead, and the little scrappy guys (like me) who just wanted to play all day long but would never carry a team. I think we can correlate each of these players with a team in MLB today – the mega-star would be the Yankees. 27 World Championships is all we need to day about that classification. The really good player would be the Cardinals – 11 World Championships, great history, but will never reach the Yankees level. Finally, the little scrappy kid – that’s the Cubs – think Squints from the movie “The Sandlot” or Tanner from “Bad News Bears”. He needs a LOT of help from better players to help them win. In my opinion, Cardinals fans HATE being the really good player who never seemingly gets his due. They want to be the alpha dog who can preen and pose while everyone ooh’s and ah’s at their greatness. That’s not going to happen – ever.

We can classify this as the Scottie Pippen complex, if I may. He is one of the 50 greatest NBA players of all time. But he will never be Mike. When Michael went to play baseball and Scottie was left to be “the man”, what happened? Nothing. Once Scottie left Chicago did he ever win anything? Nope.

For me, the classic example was Wilber Marshall. LOVED this guy when he was with the Bears; he was my second favorite player after Walter. He was a beast. But when he became a FA he bolted to be the man in Washington and…..he was never the same. Yes, he won a ring there but he was never the main cog of the defense.

This is the problem with Cardinals fans. They want the adulation for being a Jordan when they are a Pippen. Let me clarify – there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a Pippen. But you can’t expect to be looked at as a Jordan when you aren’t Jordan. That’s the Yankees. So to make themselves feel better – they pick on the Penny Hardaway of the group, the Cubs. Yes, we’ve had a few great years but could never put it all together to win the title. The more Cardinals fans feel disrespected, the more Penny gets derided.

Yogi Berra had a famous line as he was talking to Bernie Williams during the 1999 ALCS. He said, “"Relax. We've been playing these guys for 80 years. They're never gonna beat us." What a dig! There aren’t many things more derisive than indifference. The Yankees (until 2004) were indifferent towards the Red Sox because they knew they would always beat them. Why aren’t Cardinals fans like that towards Cubs fans? Can we help it that the media is fascinated with the “lovable loser” tag (I HATE that moniker)? That we have an historic ballpark with ambiance in a great neighborhood that sells out every game? It is not our fault, as Cubs fans, that the media has made the club and their fans darlings because of on the field failures; billy goats, called HR shots, Leon’s glove, Bartman….it’s all a fascinating story. But if I was a Cardinals fan (and I shudder at the thought) I would have indifference towards the Cubs until they actually won something. 

Give it a try Cardinals fans, ignore us. Enjoy being Scottie Pippen. Maybe someday we will get a chance to be Jason Terry.

By the way....

Even though I sent them in late, the uniforms below made it to the contest at http://www.uni-watch.com/. If you'd like to vote for my entry, go to the site starting this weeked and vote for my Barons design.

Thanks!
Crull

New Uniform Design

Our friends over at Uni Watch recently had a contest to redesign the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins uniforms so that the mascots would be less offensive. I chose to take on the Indians. One of the stipulations was choosing a name that had significance to the city and/or team. They gave some suggestions and I decided on one that they suggested - Barons. Here are my designs for the Cleveland Barons:

Home Uniform



Away Uniform

Alternate Uniform

Hat

Let me know what you think....

BTW, Paul Lukas has also issued a challenge on ESPN.com to rename and redesign the New Orleans Hornets logo and uniforms. Details here. I think that's my next uniform.

Meyers Leonard Gets a Surprise...

This is the best...

Meyers Leonard's brother, Bailey, returned from Afghanistan...Meyers did not know he was retruning and Bailey surprised him by showing up at the shootaround before the Michigan game on March 1.

Thank you Bailey for your service.

Full MiLB Sports Marketing Project

If you read my last post, and from the looks of it, no one did - I recently assigned my sports marketing classes a project where they needed to come up with the name of a Class A Chicago Cubs affiliate that was coming to our area. They needed to procure a sponsor for the stadium, name the team, create a logo and promote a press conference where they would reveal the aforementioned tasks.

Now that we are at the end of our unit they are building upon that base with the rest of their project. At this point, they have to:
1. Design home and away uniforms, as well as a cap
2. Create an Opening Day promotion for both adults and children. They need corporate sponsors for both promotions.
3. Create a local 30 second television commercial, design a billboard and choose four locations to put them around the city, and create a social media campaign as well.
4. Finally, thanks to Benjamin Hill at Ben's Biz Blog, they are creating a unique food item to sell at the stadium. It must be indigenous to the area, not already created/sold at another establishment, and be unique enough to draw fans on it's own accord. It can be a contest or just a grandiose item. The students will then build these food items in the FACS kitchen next week.

I'm pretty excited to see what I get. There were a couple of groups where I had to strongly suggest they go back and reconsider their team names and logos (I have a lot of comedians as students). Once the project is finished I will post results here.

Sports Marketing Project

Today I assigned the first part of a project for my sports marketing classes. The scenario at hand goes like this:

"Fishers, IN (city of our school) has approved a deal to build a baseball stadium near Hamilton Town Center (a shopping center two miled from our school) that will house the new Class A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. Your team has been hired on as marketing consultants with the city and the Cubs to name the team, create the logo and to find sponsorship for the stadium."

The end game of this section of the project is for the students to have a press conference revealing the name of the team, the logo, and the stadium sponsor. They also need to create a newspaper ad promoting the press conference and a flyer to hang at Hamilton Town Center. The press conference needs to take place (figuratively) at a place near Hamilton Town Center.

I'm very interested to see what my students create in this project. So far, some of the names are pretty creative. I wish I could reveal the rest of the project...but I can't just in case I have some students check this blog. But it's pretty cool. :)

Liam Duddy

One of my former students, Liam Duddy, saw this blog and thought it was pretty cool. He also thought I should have a post about him. This is his post.

This is a picture of him playing football. He's alright. It's better if I put a picture of him on here with his helmet on, because without it....not to mean, but yikes.


The End.