Little Boy's Dream -- A Tribute to the 2006 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals

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Little Boy's Dream

The true story of a team through the eyes of a young boy
...who happens to be 30 years old now.

by Phil Grizzard

This website is my tribute to the St. Louis Cardinals, to baseball, and to my childhood. Here I chronicle my life as a Cardinals fan, the amazing 2006 World Series Championship run by the prohibitive underdogs, and the improbable whirlwind opportunity for me to attend postseason games during this incredible run. I also reflect on many topics, trying my hand at some amateur sportswriting and social commentary. Feel free to begin perusing the site now, or read some details below.

Little Boy's Dream

Childhood

Past Decade

Pennant Race

NLDS

NLCS

World Series

Celebration

Basking

Reflection

Website Details

As you can see above, this website has 10 main pages—one for each Cardinals World Series Championship. Each page has its own logo. (Yes, I'm a dork.)

Some of the pages get kind of long, so I've tried to make navigating them easy, with labeled subsections. At the end of a segment, I have put the "left-facing bird"

to indicate conclusion, where relevant.

Starting with the last four games of the 2006 regular season, I have written the playoff run and ensuing celebration in present tense. I feel like this brings the reader into the moment better than past tense does. Everything before late September 2006 is in past tense to emphasize the time perspective of this journal.

The heading for each game is a clickable link to the stlcardinals.com or mlb.com summary for that game. I also have many more links to various other sites throughout these pages. It is possible that some of these external links may one day be taken down. It is also possible that I have mislabeled an internal link, in which case a message will appear from a German guy saying the webpage "ist nicht hier!" If either of these occur, then that's a bummer, but you can just click Back and continue your reading enjoyment.

I will briefly address this issue because I know it bugs some people. Yes, I realize that I am not on the Cardinals roster, coaching staff, front office, or even waterboy crew. Despite this, I will often use the word "we" or "us" when referring to the St. Louis Cardinals. It's just a quick way to differentiate the Cards from the other team, and besides, why pretend I'm not biased? This is the freedom I have since I'm a fan and not a sportswriter. If this bothers you, please forgive me. Hopefully it will be clear from the context when "we" refers to a group I am actually a part of, rather than the Major League Baseball team.

Non-Cardinal fans be forewarned: These experiences are entirely from my perspective. While I like to think that I have some humility and objectivity as a fan, I'm sure that my bias will be annoying to you at times (see above paragraph, for instance).

It's probably pretty clear which pictures are personal pictures as opposed to professional pictures I found on the web. But just to make sure, I've set it up so that all of my original personal pictures—either taken by me or someone in my party—are "clickable." There are a few sweet pictures I took that could be mistaken for professional ones. If you can click on it and see it isolated on a page, then it is my own personal photo.

Speaking of pictures, if you want to see the complete set of photos for a particular event, I provide the links to my snapfish.com albums. When you click on these links, Snapfish will ask you to create a username and password if you don't already have one with them. But they are very good about not sending spam, just be sure to select your email preferences the way you want them. Then you can see the full array of photos in all their splendor.