Monday Fungos, Week 5: Special St. Louis Edition

A weekend in St. Louis does strange things to a person. If you’re like me, it feels always two days too long. For Willson Contreras, the mere anticipation caused him to get married. As usual for the little bull, a tad bit of an over-reaction.

But this week’s list is all about those dadgum Cardinals. Take their secretly sinister logo. Those two birds eyeball things like a pair of goodfellas waiting to brain us with their bat. Which is about what befell the Cubs this weekend. So how dumb of this Chicagoan to only bring fungos to a bat fight. But since I normally only pack for one night in St. Louie, you’ll need to enjoy these:

1. Despite Harry Carry’s 25 years as a Cardinals announcer, Tony LaRussa remains the team’s most beloved drunk.
2. Whenever I hear, “Watch out! Here come the Cardinals,” I flash back with a shudder to my altar-boy pageant days.
3. Ever get stuck on a tour bus filled with Cardinals fans? It’s like you died and went to Missouri bingo parlor heaven.
4. If the St. Louis Arch had a secret nemesis, it would be a gate.
5. Few know in the Brock-for-Broglio trade the Cubs also got “future considerations.” This proved to be 200 pony kegs of Bud Extra. They stayed untouched until shipped to Boston as compensation for Theo Epstein.
6. Dumbest sports injury ever: Vince Coleman getting trapped under a slow-moving automated infield tarp during the 1985 World Series. “Flattened, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
7. Love or hate retired Cardinals’ announcer Tim McCarver, he did originate the term “man-splaining.”
8. Someone should re-do Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on first?” with former second baseman Tom Herr worked in there.
9. St. Louis’s second-most cherished landmark is its Old Courthouse, famed for the Dred Scott case that upheld slavery in every way. That’s like enshrining Mark McGwire’s locker with a bottle of Androstenedione in Cooperstown and then re-enacting all-steroids lineups at Doubleday Field.
10. HEY KIDS!! Last year, a ball “mysteriously” stuck to Cardinal Yadier Molina’s chest protector. This year, try finding seven other magically attached items: a TV remote, key fob, emery board, toasted ravioli snack necklace, Tiny Theriot, lucha libre mask, and one never used protective cup. And while you’re at it, why not cue up Lionel Richie’s “Stuck on You.”