The Times Dispatch Blogs

As the baseball season approaches the All-Star break, last year’s World Series champs, the St. Louis Cardinals, are struggling to stay within shouting distance of the National League Central Division-leading Milwaukee Brewers. Longtime Cardinals fans should not be surprised. Following great seasons with disappointing seasons is a part of the team’s recent history.

After winning the World Series in 1982, the Cards finished 11 games behind Philadelphia in 1983. After coming within one out of the championship before losing to the Kansas City Royals in 1985, St. Louis stumbled through 1986, finishing 28-1/2 games behind the New York Mets in the NL East. After losing another seven-game series to the Minnesota Twins in 1987, the Cardinals finished 25 games behind the Mets in 1988.

Going back even farther: A World Series appearance in ’28 — 20 games out in ’29. A championship in ’64 — 18 games out in ’65.

To be fair, the Cardinals have made back-to-back World Series appearances on at least two occasions. After losing the World Series to the Philadelphia A’s in 1930, the Redbirds came back the following year and defeated the A’s in a seven-game Series rematch. St. Louis beat the Boston Red Sox in the 1967 World Series and returned to the Series a year later, only to lose to the Detroit Tigers in seven games.
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People tend to be kind when someone messes something up (as long as they are remorseful), and the phrase “Everyone makes mistakes” is a common tool to comfort those who are being hard on themselves for an error.

In the newspaper business, unfortunately, when we make a mistake it gets reproduced thousands of times and distributed to the masses. We, of course, strive to make our newspaper as accurate as possible and go through a tedious process to make sure that everything that runs in The TD is checked as carefully as possible.

Even so, there are times mistakes get past us — sometimes small ones and sometimes big ones. This week, in a miscommunication, we believed there to be only two sons in the Bailey family and therefore thought that Eugene Jr. and Leslie must be the same boy. When we ran the story on the tragic loss of Eugene, we used a photo from a Hoxie annual of Leslie and only later discovered that Eugene and Leslie were actually two different people.

We, obviously, were mortified at our error; however, with the paper already printed, there was very little we could do. Wednesday morning as the paper was being distributed, a couple of us took a paper and went to visit Mr. and Mrs. Bailey to explain to them how we had made this mistake and to offer our apologies and condolences.

When we arrived, we were greeted kindly, and they quickly told us that they understood how the error had been made. They were gracious in making us feel better about a mistake, when they didn’t have to be.

We tend to beat ourselves up even over the little mistakes, but when we make a mistake that could be hurtful to a member of our community, we really take it hard. I am grateful to the Bailey family for their understanding and continue to offer my condolences for their loss.
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