It used to be no matter what, there was an intensity when the Cubs played the Cardinals. In baseball Civil Wars, the front lines in the territorial loyalties splits Central Illinois in half. No matter how good or bad the opponent's record, fans were "all in" in rooting for their team to win.
A series sweep over one's rival takes the sting out of a 100 loss season.
Or it used to.
Since the financial crash of 2008, the Cubs-Cardinals series has been in decline. The buzz was lost. Ticket prices got expensive, and the quality of baseball got weak. Then it got lopsided with the Cardinals making deep play off runs while the Cubs struggled under new ownership.
In a rare occurrence, 41,500 people actually showed up to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play the Cardinals. Now, perhaps half of the crowd were St. Louis fans, but this was the best crowd of the year. And the Cubs scraped to a 7-6 victory in a see-saw contest which saw home runs, errors, base running mistakes and wild pitches.
One game does not revitalize the rivalry because while the Cards are a competitive team year in and year out, the Cubs continue to be mired in its self-proclaimed AAA exile. When many fans and season ticket holders lost interest in the season before it started, Chicago does not have rabid fan base it once had to drive the rivalry forward from generation to generation.
Fantasy leagues has also contributed to the lack of pure rivalries. Since fantasy players use baseball players from every team roster, they begin to root for individual players over individual teams. This dilutes the rivalry experience. A fantasy and Cub fan may have Matt Holliday on his team roster - - - so it is hard to root against him when he hits a home run.
Cubs-Cards is turning into a light verbal cue of two old guys in a nursing home, one being a ex-Marine and the other an Army veteran. Which service was better? But at some point, they will both forget that they were in the service altogether.
