A Cardinal fan for 82 years
I met a most charming man Thursday night, 93-year-old Charles Ingram, a retired Tulsa business executive. We attended a dinner together in T-Town, and the subject eventually found its way to baseball.
Mr. Ingram is a Cardinal fan — lots of Tulsans are Cardinal fans, dating back to not just KMOX broadcasts that turned much of the Central Time Zone into St. Louis die-hards but to the Cardinals’ top farm club residing in Tulsa for many years.
Anyway, Mr. Ingram told me how he became a Cardinal fan. As a kid, he lived in Henryetta, and his father had occasion to go to St. Louis on business, and while there, his father was going to attend the World Series. The year was 1926. St. Louis’ first World Series.
Charles Ingram, then an 11-year-old boy, listened on radio to those games, one of the greatest Serieses ever. The Series where Grover Cleveland Alexander, the aging, hardened pro, came in relief for St. Louis in the seventh inning of Game 7, striking out Tony Lazzeri to preserve the Cardinals’ lead and eventually deliver the Series to St. Louis.
Mr. Ingram has been on the Cardinal bandwagon ever since. Thursday night, he talked a little about 1926, but he also talked about 2008, how if the Cardinals had a closer, they would be even with the Cubs in the NL Central instead of chasing, five or six games behind.
There’s something captivating about hearing a man talk about the 1926 World Series and the 2008 pennant race, not from a history book perspective but from personal experience. No other sport can match it. Here’s to another 82 years of following the Cardinals for Charles Ingram.
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The Cardinals play in the greatest baseball town in the world. I’ve been a Cardinals’ fan since 1963, when I first started rooting for their farm team, the old Tulsa Oilers.
Go, Cards!