Thanks for the link...let's hope the cardinals blog-o-sphere hasn't gone into off-season hibernation and can rally around this most noble of efforts.

I threw in my two cents, which is that Wille isn't worthy of having his number retired. Twenty-ninth among Cardinals in batting avaerge? Not even in the top 50 Cardinals lifetime in OBP? There's a half a dozen guys whose numbers I'd retire before Willie's, but none of them have the advantage of playing during the collective memory of the blogosphere.

Hehe I'm fully aware that Ray Lankford will never get his number retired, or be remembered as the player he was, but that doesn't mean I can't complain about it for the next fifty years. And that's definitely the plan.

Willie-willie-willie was a World Series hero. Ray-ray was the primary offensive weapon on some bad teams with really bad pitching. Lank-ford (with a tip-o-the-cap to John Ulett) won't get his due because he's not associated with a winner. McGee and all of his swinging at curve balls in the dirt is elevated because of 1982, 1985, and 1987, and even 1990 when he won the NL batting title while sequestered in Oakland.

Now don't get me wrong, I loved Willie and the way he played. But if I was a major league manager, and my pitcher threw anything to McGee except curve balls in the dirt, my pitcher would be paying major clubhouse fines, washing my car, whatever punishment I could think of. The guy could not and would not lay off the curve ball in the dirt, period.

TSF

I think people liked willie because he swung at those horrible curve balls and because of the painful faces he made as he was adjusting his helmet and digging in.

Willie was unique if not great. And he sold cookies in the stadium years later. My friends and I used to have a theory that no one ever told Willie he got paid to play, and so he never knew. He had that kind of attitude.

And he was an extremely humble and classy guy. In certain ways, he was everything that Ozzie Smith was not.

Agreed, Ryan, the faces he made were great.

TSF