2006 World Champions

The 2006 St Louis Cardinals, World Series Winner!! Who da thunk it? A team that managed to almost blow an entire season and on the very last day of the season managed to eak out first place in their division. That means they won more games than anyone else in their division which in turn means, they get a shot at the title.
A great team? It all depends on how you look at them. In 2004 the St Louis Cardinals won 100+ games including post season and were swept 4 games to none in the world series. this year was a different story, they managed to get most of the regular lineup together, they pulled together and as a team, they won, by scraping together, by relying on each other, by rooting for the guy in the lineup that day, by doing anything necessary to win. And they did. Everyone gave them nothing but grief just for making the playoffs, and as each round ended, with them advancing the critics poopoohed their chances of getting any further. All the way up to the end, Detroit will kill them! This team doesn't deserve to be here, to still be playing, how crass of them to even pretend they belong. They do not deserve to play with the good teams. Last night they won the world series! A team with a good many castoffs from other teams had done the impossible. They had beaten three teams in the post season, three better teams, supposedly, and at the end of the evening the trophy was theirs. To cherish, to savor, to handle with kid gloves. To tell thier kids and grandkids about years from now. They are winners from their hearts to their abilities to their guts and fortitude. They are worthy of the title World Champions, they earned it the last 3 weeks. Can anyone else make the same statement?

When I see what keepers and other survivors have done, to survive years of abuse, to keep on going, to try to understand their past and why and what they are, I can easily see that they too are champions, life champions that so many, mostly their abusers, say they do not deserve. Why not? Because they survived? Because they are not worthy? Because they are not normal? Those like keepers, multiples, like that team of 25 seperate players, pull their alters, their players together, over many long years of remembrances and tortures, and come out the winners. And they are criticized for not being elite, for not being the epitomy of the great teams, for not being like the rest. No credit is given for what they achieved. Some of their biggest detractors and critics have accomplished nothing near what they have. Nor have they tried. Unlike keepers and other multiples and survivors, the critics demean their success while failing in their own games. Like the Detroit Tigers they make errors, they miss chances, some of them even have the question of their having cheated come up. They criticize the less than great team while praising their own false ideals and abilities, not realizing they were the overachievers all the time, they were the ones destined to fall, while the team of castoffs, of borderline abilities, was destined to achieve immortality.

To the St Louis Cardinals of 2006, my gratitude and thanks for a post season to remember, capped by the championship.

To the survivors I live with every day and those I know from the emails, or visiting their sites and their visits to ours, my gratitude for the lessons you teach me, my thanks for not giving up and my respect for pulling together in so many ways, and being the champions each of you are.

john michael