This city builds teams on foundations of hate. Theirs or yours – they aren't particular. New Yorkers invite your scorn. It nourishes them.
They accept it, absorb it and turn it into an army of Billy Martins and Sean Averys.
From the outside looking in, you can at least respect this charismatic myopia.
New Yorkers care about two opinions – their own and Boston's (but only when Boston is winning. So, really, they only care about their own).
The Yankees or Knicks or Rangers roll through town, sneering. They despoil the folk. They strut away. A crowd gathers at the airport to massacre them. Then Derek Jeter winks and everyone gets confused. The Yankees are despicable, but they have a cocky charm. That's undeniable. Sickening and undeniable. Hating them is a perverse compliment not worth paying.
This is what the St. Louis Cardinals and their fans don't get. It's the reason people take the time and effort to loath them.
The Cardinals are, easily, the most despised team in baseball, and maybe all the world. If you spend any time on social media, the level of animus is jarring. When the Cardinals hit a game-winning home run in the playoffs, otherwise rational men and women begin to froth like mangy dogs.
We've tamped down on our hate speech in society's moist, traditional corners, so it has to come spilling out somewhere. People online talk about the Cardinals the way the way people in the village square used to talk just before a pogrom kicked off.
Most of this is down to jealousy. The Cardinals have been too good for too long, and it's begun to look greedy. Since the Jays last made the playoffs, the Cardinals have been there a dozen times. A dozen. If you love the playoffs so much, St. Louis, why don't you move there? Oh, you have? Well, fine. Fine. FINE.
They've built baseball's most consistent farm system. Beyond that, they make terrible decisions, every one of which works out.
Who lets Albert Pujols go via free agency when he's the consensus best player in baseball? The Cardinals do. Pujols immediately begins to play like he's 50 (which he may be).
Who takes a $120-million (U.S.) chance on Matt Holliday, a guy who looks like he's been inflated with a bicycle pump? The Cardinals. Of course, this one works out.
Who trades the future Joe DiMaggio, Colby Rasmus, for a bunch of bullpen mopes? The Cardinals do, and then they win the World Series. In turn, Rasmus morphs into a teenage, baseball-playing goth who won't cut his hair, come to the ballpark on time or listen to anything the manager says.
Beyond success, what bothers people about Cardinals fans is their cartoon wholesomeness. They embody the pornography of U.S. Midwestern values. They're big, toothy, y'all-ing types with the money to travel around the country being smug en masse in other people's ballparks.
They're so ubiquitous, you want to be careful about watching the game at home with the windows open. Cardinals fans may begin congregating in your yard.
They are the best fans in baseball. Just ask them.
Nobody cared when the Cardinals were a middling team. They made the playoffs five out of six years in the early aughties and lost each time. That team contained my all-time favourite player, Scott Rolen. Beyond that, they were awful. Yet, you almost liked them. That was the moment of peak Cardinals sympathy.
They won a championship in 2006 and someone came up with this "Kiss the rings" idea and it all went pear-shaped.
It's become an entrenched fight since. We are united in hating the Cardinals. Cardinals supporters know this and do a very poor job pretending it doesn't bother them. The Wall Street Journal wrote a light, tongue-in-cheek piece about it recently. St. Louis's mayor wrote back with a vaguely hysteric riposte that actually contained the words "Don't hate us because we're beautiful."
Does everyone in St. Louis carry the noses around in their bags, having long ago cut them off?
New Yorkers really, really don't care what you think. You live somewhere other than New York. The credibility of your judgment is shot from the outset.
It's the same principle in St. Louis, but working in reverse. You could start listing off a lot of terrible American cities. St. Louis might be the most depressing of the bunch. There's a festering inferiority complex at work here.
The cycle of St. Louis-baiting and growing local anger has begun to spill out in ugly ways during this year's playoffs. Residents of Ferguson, Mo., one of the city's suburbs, have been protesting the death of Michael Brown outside Busch Stadium.
There have been tense moments and a few cringe-inducing encounters. One deep-thinker was photographed wearing a Cardinals jersey with "I Am Darren Wilson" taped to the back. Wilson is the police officer who shot and killed Brown.
You don't want to confuse a fight over baseball (which doesn't matter) with a fight about social justice (which does). However, you can see how the hard feelings over the former are malignantly feeding the latter. Some Cardinals fans are into the wildly lashing-out phase of their hurt feelings.
Their team isn't easing their emotional pain at the moment, losing 5-4 in San Francisco in extra innings on Tuesday to fall behind 2-1 in the National League Championship Series.
But the Cards will probably be back in the World Series. I have a great faith in the mystic power of streaks and most especially those that promise maximum, generalized angst.
The fans of America's most hated team might want to take a lesson from their counterparts in New York.
It's not being hated that matters. From a sports perspective, it's a badge of honour. What matters is how you carry it.
St. Louis, you've been here before. Start acting like it.
Cathal Kelly