St. Louis to America:
Don’t Be Jealous
Mayor of St. Louis Responds to the Cardinals
Being Called ‘Hateable’
The following is a
response from the mayor of St. Louis to a Tuesday Journal article that named
the St. Louis Cardinals the most hate-worthy team in this year’s baseball
playoffs.
The Wall Street
Journal recently released its second-annual Major League Baseball Hateability Index in which it ranked the
10 playoff teams for 2014 “in order of general loathsomeness.” The rankings
were based on 10 essential categories to haters including drug suspensions,
“ridiculous beards” and, of course, the time-honored crime of winning too much.
On the strength of its
pennant collection and rabid fan base, which both travels to opposing stadiums
and refers to itself as a “nation,” my hometown St. Louis Cardinals came in
first.
“The Cardinals
prevailed in large part because of one of the primary measures of
repulsiveness: recent success,” the Journal reported, as St. Louis bested the
nearly-as-loathsome Los Angeles Dodgers. Take that, L.A.!
You see, while you
might think of St. Louis as flyover country and not pay us much due, we’re kind
of a big deal come October on Major League Baseball diamonds. In fact, we’re
kind of a big deal for a number of reasons.
Thus, I feel compelled
to deliver a simple message to America: We’re sorry.
Sure, we’re sorry the
Cardinals have won 11 World Series championships, two since 2006. But there’s
much, much more for which we owe all of you a heartfelt apology.
Indeed, we’re sorry
that New York and San Francisco are 2.3 times and 1.7 times respectively more
expensive to live in than the St. Louis metro area.
We’re sorry for
producing one of the world’s best-selling batteries (Energizer) and two of the
10 best-selling beers in the world—Budweiser and Bud Light.
We’re sorry that the
four largest metro areas in the nation lost nearly 25,000 financial-service
jobs between January 2007 and September 2012, while St. Louis added more than
5,500 in the sector.
That guy Jon Hamm?
Yeah, we’re sorry for raising him here and sending him out into the world for
your entertainment delight.
We’re sorry for our
diverse community in that more Bosnians—over 60,000—call St. Louis home than
anywhere outside of Bosnia.
We’re sorry for Forest
Park, our beautiful 1,300-acre urban park comprises an award-winning zoo,
science center, art and history museums, golf courses, ice rink and green
space.
We’re sorry for not
only being home to 18 Fortune 1000 companies, but for developing one of the
most promising and fastest-growing ecosystems for startups and entrepreneurs,
delivering innovations that are being used by businesses and consumers world-wide.
You know, like that pesky social-media platform Twitter (St. Louisan Jack
Dorsey ) or credit-card processing device Square (St. Louisan Jim McKelvey).
We’re sorry that at
the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Richard Blechynden served tea with ice,
thus inventing iced tea (although not the rapper/actor Ice-T).
We are, in fact,
actually kind of sorry that our state animal is the mule, but that’s another
discussion for another day. The point is that we here in the Midwest are not a
boastful people. We’re humble and quietly go about our business, inventing the
things you use every day, entertaining you, finding employment for your
citizens and handing you losses on the baseball field regularly. (We’re
especially sorry to Chicago.)
Don’t hate us because
we’re beautiful here in St. Louis. But if you do, just know that we’re sorry.
Go Cards!
--Francis G. Slay is
the mayor of St. Louis.
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