Everybody knows somebody like this, and all of us have probably been this person at one time or another. The person wants to be part of a group, really wants it, and once they become part of it, they display lots of effort trying to show they belong. That's what I always thought when I listened to Wayne Hagin broadcast Cardinals games. I'm not saying he did a poor job. It just sounded to me like the man was trying too hard.

Following a legend like Jack Buck couldn't have been easy. Reports/rumors of friction with broadcast partner Mike Shannon certainly didn't help him. The Todd Helton thing was a mis-step, to put it charitably. And it takes a long time for someone who's not from St. Louis to be accepted as a St. Louisan (unless you move to town in late July / early August and hit 24 home runs the rest of the season, but that's a different story).

The story reads much like this: "Wayne was a nice guy. Wayne was a professional. Wayne did everything with class. But we had a chance to replace him with somebody even better, and we're gonna do it."

I suspect that Wayne rubbed the folks at KTRS the way he rubbed me -- he called an OK game, but it just didn't sound quite right. Too many words at times where a few would do, not enough at times when more were needed.

Speaking of KTRS, I'm anxiously awaiting news of whether my local station will remain a Cardinals network station this year. WDWS in Champaign, IL is the flagship University of Illinois Fighting Illini station, and is balking at the new network requirement of carrying all of the spring training games. U of I baseball has always taken precedence in the spring -- it's part of the "price" WDWS pays for being the hub of U of I football and basketball games. If not, I'm hoping that WSOY out of Decatur or WJBC out of Bloomington remain on the network, but even then, those are a little far for me to pull in regularly. I'll miss the mighty MOX as my fall-back signal.

TSF