A good year for baseball

This year is shaping up to be a good year for baseball!

The beloved St. Louis Cardinals have the biggest lead of any divisional leader (6 1/2 games) of any leader and have, in fact, the best won-loss record of any major league team. Their start to the 2015 season is the best start since the Cardinals first put the ball into play back in 1892.

Across the Sho-Me State, the Kansas City Royals are leading their division by a game over Detroit. The Royals are the best hitting team in the American League with a .282 overall average, and have the 2nd best pitching stats with a 3.03 ERA. Their best player is big Mike Moustakas who is smacking baseballs at a .323 rate.

Moustakas is familiar to baseball fans in northwest Arkansas as he was a Naturals star not that long ago, leading the Springdale based team to Texas league championships. KC's second best hitter is Kendyn Morales, sporting a .311 average. Morales won honors playing for the Arkansas Travelers in Little Rock, before moving to the Royals organization.

When Moustakas was promoted to KC along with several prospects a few years back, the Naturals hit a dry spell but the almost "Thunder Chickens" have reloaded and are leading the North Division of the Texas League with a 30-15 record, the same winning percentage of the Cardinals.

Currently, the Cardinals have the best pitching staff in the league with an incredible team earned run average under 3.00 at 2.69. Pitcher Michael Wacha leads the league in wins at 7-0. John Lackey is the second best pitcher in ERA with a 2.83 among starting pitchers. The bullpen leads the NL with a 2.17 ERA.

Currently, four Cardinals are batting over 300 including Matt Holliday .320, Colton Wong .318, Matt Carpenter .314, and Jhonny Peralta .311. The team's batting average is the second best in the National League with an overall .269 average.

With the team off to their best start ever with a history that includes 11 World Series Championships, the 2015 squad could set some new records. All this in the face of losing their pitching ace Adam Wainwright for the year due to to an injury, along with their rising first baseman Matt Adams.

If you are reading this column on Wednesday, June 3, I will happily be sitting with my son Wes at the St. Louis/Milwaukee ball game watching the Cards take on the division foe Brewers. Lackey will be pitching and the odds look exceedingly good for a St. Louis victory. I have watched hundreds of Cardinals games on TV, listening to perhaps thousands more on the radio, as the St. Louis is the only professional sports team that I keep track of with any degree of regularity. This will make my first trip to a Cardinal game so I am looking forward to the trip.

I have attended several major league games at Wrigley Field, the home of the Cubs. In each case, my wife was in ChiTown for business and I was along as driver and luggage carrier. The Cubs field is right off the "L" which connected to the hotel we stayed on and when offered free tickets, I went to the games. Sadly, the Cards were never in town on those but I did get to see sportscaster legend Harry Caray at some of the games. I was a big fan of Caray when he announced the Cardinals games before moving to Chicago.

A Cardinals fan since 1964 when I watched my first World Series (the Cards beat the Yanks), I am like a lot of Arkansans who grew up watching St. Louis on TV. Arkansas was a rich recruiting ground for Cardinal scouts in the old days and back in the day, the Travelers were associated with the St. Louis organization.

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Editor's note: John McGee is an award-winning columnist and sports writer. He can be contacted through The Times at [email protected].

Sports on 06/03/2015