11/14/2005
A Plea To Cardinals Fans
Note - If you are reading this and not from the St. Louis area, or not a Cardinals fan, I feel obliged to tell you that Willie McGee is regarded as somewhat of a baseball god in this town. Every sports franchise has a Willie McGee type character - someone who was a good to great player, though probably not a hall of famer, but someone who left their fans with millions of pleasant memories. Check out WillieMcGee.com to see what I'm talking about. I respect the man as much as anyone, but I do find it odd that Willie can't even order a steakburger with cheese in St. Louis and not get a standing ovation; meanwhile Ray Lankford can get a hole-in-one playing the Golden Tee machine at Mike Duffy's and only get a mild-to-luke warm applause. Anyhoo...About a month or so back, a buddy of mine (Dave Timpone) asked St. Louis Post Dispatch writer Derrick Goold in one of his mailbag columns about his thoughts concerning why the Cardinals have not yet retired Willie McGee's number 51. Mr. Goold seemed to sympathize with Dave's want, and suggested that perhaps a petition should be started and submitted to the Cardinal's front office.
Dave, however, is now planning on doing (in his words) "instead of a petition - I could do a write up of why I think his number should be retired and then have the next 100 or so pages be random people talking about their favorite Willie McGee memories. Now I have to figure out how to get random people to give me their Willie McGee stories."
If you're interested in helping out Dave's cause, head on over to a thread we started at Viva El Birdos, take part in the poll, and feel free to share your favorite Willie Memory ("Willie McGee and me sitting on a park bench, sharing an ice cream cone" is not only acceptable, it is awesome.)
