State Rep Wants to Declare the St. Louis Cardinals the Official Baseball Team of Missouri

BREAKING: pic.twitter.com/sDruu2hluD
— Baseball's Best Fans (@BestFansStLouis) March 23, 2016

Everytime you begin to think that maybe the St. Louis Cardinals and their fans get a bad rap, they go ahead and do something like this. Missouri state Representative Allen Curtis from district 73, which covers part of St. Louis, has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives seeking to have the Cardinals declared the official team of the state. It's all right there: an official instrument, requiring legislators to vote yea or nay on whether the fucking state code of Missouri should be amended to include a portion about an official baseball team.

I don't know what's worse, that this thing even exists, or that the sole justification for it appears to be that the Cardinals organization is so old it remembers the Chester A. Arthur administration.

You might be wondering to yourself why this act is even necessary, which is a very good thing to wonder. But there is a simply explanation—apart from the ever present one that elected officials are by and large do-nothing charlatans we've allowed to run amok in our cities, states, and country—and that explanation is the Kansas City Royals. The Royals, also a team playing baseball in Missouri, won the World Series last year and, it should be pointed out, the Cardinals did not. The Cardinals spent many years basking in the glory of Missouri as the little brother Royals kicked dirt around, but then everyone got Royals fever. And on the day they held their Victory parade, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch put together a slide show asking which team was better. Big brothers aren't supposed to be the ones with inferiority complexes, but here we are.

The bill has been read twice, but there has not been a hearing scheduled on it yet. Rep. Allen Curtis is probably just salty that his Royals friends have been giving him the business all winter.