Shout it from the top of the Arch. Proclaim it from the farthest reaches of Cardinal Nation. Print it on an MLB-licensed t-shirt. The Curse of Keith Hernandez has ended.

If you’ve been reading this blog or several others over the last few years, you are no doubt aware of the Curse of Keith Hernandez, which has been in effect since June 15, 1983, the day the team traded their captain to the New York Mets for Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey. To review, the Cardinals had not won a championship since that worst deadline deal in team history, and they have failed due to many strange calamities. Notable injuries or unsolved mysteries during the Curse period:

• 1985: Vince Coleman injury, Don Denkinger call
• 1987: John Tudor, Terry Pendleton and Jack Clark injuries
• 1996: Ray Lankford injury, Donovan Osborne implosion
• 2000: Mike Matheny injury, Rick Ankiel implosion
• 2002: Scott Rolen injury
• 2004: Chris Carpenter injury, Jeff Suppan baserunning gaffe
• 2005: Scott Rolen and Al Reyes injuries

We, along with others, sensed that this day was close at hand, as certain signs seemed to indicate the end of the Curse. When we first documented the Curse, we anticipated that 2004 was the year, when the Cardinals faced the Boston Red Sox — the Mets’ foe in the 1986 series — in the World Series. More recently, Alex Fritz at FYC announced that the Curse had been reversed back in October 2005.

But Alex’s and our elation was premature. All the prophecies had not been fulfilled. Let’s review some of the reasons that we postulated could indicate the breaking of the curse back in 2004:

Since Hernandez left, the Cardinals amazingly haven’t had a player play more than two 100-game seasons at first base. Though Pu has only one season under his belt at first, he’s played four 100-plus-game seasons and is a lock to be the first baseman of the future.

By playing 143 games at 1B this season, Pujols now has the most 100-game seasons at the position since Hernandez.

Since Hernandez left, the glove situation at first has been, well, rocky at best. The litany of stone-glovers since 1982 has included mostly players “converted” from other positions where they couldn’t field either: namely Gregg Jefferies, Dmitri Young and Pedro Guerrero. With the exception of the one-year stint of Andres Galarraga (the man who took the Gold-Glove mantle from Mex in 1989), Pu is the best defensive first-sacker the team has had.

This is certainly one of the Class A prophecies that needed to be fulfilled. Pujols, steadily improving at first base, was finally recognized last week as a Gold Glover, the first Cardinal first baseman since Hernandez, of course, to do so.

Hernandez has forgiven the organization and has appeared in various St. Louis functions, including the 1982 team reunion and Mike Shannon’s charity golf tournament and a Cards game not involving the Mets, a team he broadcasts for.

Evidently, the final component of Mex making peace was to take part in the abolition of the old Busch Stadium, which contained far too many memories of Whitey Herzog, the man who had tried to trade Mex every offseason after coming to the Cardinals and almost ruined his career by moving him to left field. Not only did Hernandez “retire” number 38 (Busch II games left), but he was also on hand for the final game.

After being traded, Mex captained the Mets to the World Championship in 1986 — over the Boston Red Sox (a team who ace was none other than Roger Clemens).

Not only did the Cardinals win the World Series — a Class A prophecy, of course — they did so 20 years to the day of the Mets’ 1986 championship.

Some other curiosities have come to pass in recent months:

• While Hernandez had once claimed loyalty to the Mets – “I think I’m a Met” (10/10/2000) — he (like we eventually would) came to realize his true identity back on 10/2/2006, saying “I realize that I am a Cardinal and that’s all there is to it.”
• Wikipedia inexplicably and suddenly removed their article on the Curse of Keith Hernandez back in June.
• Jeff Suppan, uniform number 37, was named the NLCS MVP after the Cardinals defeated the heavily-favored New York Mets, and in doing so, atoned for his baserunning gaffe in the 2004 World Series.
• The Cardinals’ championship team had a connection to Met Game 6 hero Mookie Wilson in his stepson Preston (why else would they have signed him? Just kidding, of course; we appreciated Wilson’s contributions).
• The Cardinals vanquished the Mets just in time for to honor the birthday of Keith Hernandez (Oct. 20), who, despite being the Mets’ TV color man this season, was curiously absent from the playoffs because he needed to be in Florida “for tax reasons.”
• This season, the Mets perhaps began the transfer of the curse to themselves by assigning emergency call-up Jose Lima number 17, Mex’s old number with the club.

And one of the most important elements of the Curse may yet come to pass this offseason: the surrendering of his old uniform number 37. Jeff Suppan, heretofore bearer of the digits, will quite possibly leave the Cardinals in favor of greener pastures. If and when that happens, we fully expect that the Cardinal organization will take the opportunity to tactfully and tastefully take the number 37 out of circulation and never issue it again. (Now if Albert Pujols is named co-winner of the MVP Award, we’re really going to be freaked out.)

We of course have a personal stake in the Curse, inasmuch as we were once a diehard Cardinal fan and loyal Keith Hernandez fan. Indeed, he was our favorite player. But we could only cry in disbelief as we heard the news that the team we had only months earlier cheered to a World Series win had traded away its captain. To make matters worse, it was to the utter doormat of the league and it was for two players whose worth and reputation were insulting. Thus betrayed by our hometown team, we gave into our anger and, following our hero, donned the loathsome mask of the dark side, of the team that would soon become the evil empire of the 1980s.

As you might imagine, this then represents a fundamental shift in the tectonic plates undergirding our fan loyalty, a life-change that could only be compared with a religious conversion, a commuting of a prison sentence or a recovery from an addiction. We suppose that in the back of our mind — yea, in the deepest recesses of our dark Met-loving heart — we yearned to see this day, when Luke Skywalker would peel back the black mask of Darth Vader to once again reveal Anakin, reformed and redeemed from his many years of evil. We are proud to announce that, not only has the Curse ended but, along with it, our slavery to its ravages. It has been 8,536 days since we last claimed Cardinal loyalty, but now, our burdensome allegiance buried, we renounce our fealty to the New York Mets and declare once again, our perennial, unswerving and unqualified devotion to the St. Louis Cardinals. Our long-tormented baseball soul is at peace once again.

This entry was posted by Pip on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 3:53 pm and is filed under editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.