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Taking lessons in stoicism from Rookie Manager Tom Kelly, Minnesota was inclined to regard it not as a crash but as a correction. From the July All- Star Game to the October playoffs, Gary Gaetti, Kent Hrbek and Kirby Puckett brought all their muscle to bear, and still the Twins won just nine away games. For that matter, the last time the franchise managed a World Series victory on the road, the Washington Senators won it and Walter Johnson pitched it. Naturally, the people of St. Louis cannot imagine a more genial place than Busch Stadium, though their perspective may have become a little bleary over the years. Ford Frick was the commissioner in 1953, when Gussie Busch bought the team and wanted to rename old Sportsman's Park Budweiser Stadium. Frick ruled out such crass huckstering, but at 88 Busch has got the last laugh aboard a beer wagon that fetches him to his box before the home games.
Like sedated Clydesdales, the fans of St. Louis have been trained to clomp along to the Bud theme played incessantly as a rallying call. Advertisers might term this subconscious motivation, but it is conscious aggravation to everyone else. And someone seems to open the hatch to the broadcast booth whenever the organist strikes up again. After three days of shouting over an uninterrupted commercial, ABC's Al Michaels, Tim McCarver and Jim Palmer must have been glad to get back to the relative quiet of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.
Humphrey's presidential campaign song in 1968 was a regrettable selection that went, "Will everyone here kindly step to the rear and let a winner lead the way." From before Humphrey to after Walter Mondale, with a lot of Harold Stassen and Viking Super Bowls in between, the hanky-waving citizenry has been desperate to be known as a winner and to lead the way. Behind 5-2 in the sixth game, they thought about despairing again, until old Don Baylor hit a two-run homer, and Hrbek a grand slam. No team had ever won all four home games in a World Series, but by a score of 11-5 and a grace as big as all indoors, the Twins won the right to try. Meanwhile, back in St. Louis, the headline writers stood by wondering which it would be -- THIS BUD'S FOR YOU! or NO JOY IN BUDVILLE.