The Springfield Cardinals season went out on Sunday not with a bang but a whimper… OK, well maybe it was just me whimpering. They lost 18-9. Ouch!

Oh it hurt to watch. Literally. I slept very little Saturday night and woke up with blurred vision, and a crazy headache. Stress, exhaustion and hurricane sized heartache can mix up one mean migraine.

I had to help with the preschoolers at church so there was no playing hooky. I tried my very hardest to smile and not throw up on other people’s children. I consider my efforts successful. Such high standards I hold myself to when it comes to involuntary ministry.

Back to the game:

It wasn’t just the score, or the heat and the blinding sunlight that made this game hard to watch. It was Katrina. It felt inappropriate being there. Cheering.

I gave the kids some money to put in the Red Cross collection at the gate. Sarah told me that the people were going to take her money out of the bottle and build houses out of brick for kids and moms and dads who don’t have houses anymore. Out Of Brick. My almost three year old still connects Hurricane Katrina to the Big Bad Wolf. And she huffed and she puffed…

The Cardinals finished the season at .500. They won 70 games and they lost 70 games. I’m happy with that. Hammons Field was named BaseBallParks.com’s Ballpark of the Year. Well of course, it’s an amazingly beautiful place.

Saying goodbye. I’m afraid many of our favorite players won’t be back in April. That’s the nature of Minor League Baseball. The kids will be terribly disappointed if Papo isn’t playing on ‘the white team’ next spring. I will miss the couple that had season tickets behind ours. They said, “see you next year.”

Perhaps. I’ve found that isn’t usually true. I remember saying good bye to my Meteorology lab partner in college. “Well, see you around.” “Yeh, see ya!” Never again. I remember saying good bye to a couple we met in childbirth class before Jeremiah was born. They lived in Branson. We lived in Springfield. We acted like we’d see them soon… Like our boys would play together… Yeh see you soon! We didn’t even exchange phone numbers.

I’m being to negative. Sometimes people do cross our paths again. Hillery, Jami Cook and Kelly are examples of that. I could tell those stories, but goodness this post is supposed to be about baseball.