This weekend, the St Louis Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers to win the World Series. The confetti and fireworks filled the Friday night sky as the redbird faithful jumped up and down in celebration. The improbable comeback marked the 11th World Series title by the Cardinals, second only to the Yankees. By now, this is hardly news to most. Watching the World Series always brings back great memories of my ever-distancing childhood. As a freshman in high school and then in college, we celebrated the Minnesota Twins World Series wins and enjoyed the civic pride that accompanied a World Series win. But, this isn’t a baseball blog—so, I better start getting to the point.
The point is this, St Louis, which CNBC just rated one of the worst cities in the US, is in the midst of a galvanizing experience. The kids, firefighters, teachers and denizens of St Louis-regional area have undoubtedly been buoyed baseball. Minus natural disasters and times of fear, what galvanizes our communities today? Are there sustained benefits to these galvanizing experiences or a temporary blip on the radar? Can St. Louis take the goodwill of a World Series win and remove itself from CNBC’s list of 20 Places you don’t want to live? Here’s hoping the Cardinals have that affect and that the Twins give us an opportunity to study that here in Minnesota.
It would be great if St. Louis could channel the energy and enthusiasm we all have for the Cardinals and turn it into something sustainable beyond the season and bigger than baseball. We — along with hundreds of thousands of other people — were downtown yesterday for the World Series Parade, which was an incredible shared emotional experience.
Just a week before, we had been walking and running the same streets at the Rock & Roll Marathon/Half-Marathon. Again, an incredible shared emotional experience with tens of thousands of strangers.
How to make these experiences the norm, not the exception?
I know there are many people working on addressing this challenge here in St. Louis. I haven’t seen CNBC’s reasons for putting St. Louis on its list, but can tell you there are moments where there is no better place to live.