This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 5, 2009 - It was once said that St. Louis was "first in shoes, first in booze and last in the American League." That adage has not withstood the test of time.
First, the city's American League baseball franchise, the Browns, flew the coop to become the Baltimore Orioles following the 1953 season. Next, the shoe manufacturing industry migrated to the cheap labor havens of the Third World. (If the Boot & Shoe Workers' Union still exists, it has an unlisted number because it can't be found in the telephone directory.) Finally, the last major brewery headquartered here, Anheuser-Busch, was bought out by a corporation from Belgium.
It appears that the sun has also set on the city's proud history of aviation pioneering. Charles Lindbergh piloted "The Spirit of St. Louis" to Paris and during most of the Cold War, McDonnell Aircraft -- later, McDonnell-Douglas -- was the pre-eminent manufacturer of fighter aircraft in the Free World. Lindbergh's plane now hangs in the Smithsonian and Big Mac has since been acquired by Boeing, whose headquarters are located in Chicago.
After being gutted by Carl Icahn, TWA folded and so, despite a surfeit of capacity and a central location, the city is no longer a hub for airline travel.
At one time, every Corvette in the world was assembled within the city limits. Today, you'd be lucky to find a skateboard that was built here.
All these setbacks have left us with something of a civic inferiority complex. When you find St. Louis ranked in the upper tier of metropolitan areas, you're usually talking about crime, venereal disease or obesity.
Like a suitor who has been rebuffed once too often, we begin to question our municipal self-worth. A sort of genteel pessimism haunts the collective psyche. Optimistic appraisals of our future prospects are more likely to engender sighs than applause. If you want to go to dinner in Ballpark Village tonight, don't forget to bring your barbeque pit.
People who lack self-confidence tend to be suspicious of others who claim to like them. With all of its faults, why would anybody be attracted to this place? Those who chose to come here are suspected of ulterior motives. Nowhere is this phenomenon better illustrated than in the case of our local NFL franchise.
The St. Louis Rams are the athletic equivalent of a mail-order bride. They were bought and paid for, plain and simple.
After Bill Bidwill led his Cardinals into the desert, the city fell out of the big leagues in terms of America's most popular spectator sport. Local gridiron fans adopted teams from other cities to follow. A vocal contingent of Cleveland Browns fans came to life. They held tailgate parties outside of their favorite bars before going inside to watch the game on satellite TV -- big-time football as celebrated in a second-rate city.
After internecine warfare doomed not one, but two, regional efforts to acquire an expansion franchise, the city was left with what was officially termed a "convention center expansion" that looked suspiciously like a football stadium -- and no team. That's when the late Thomas Eagleton entered the picture.
Eagleton was put in charge of the effort to find a team to play in the dome. A former Democratic senator, he knew a thing or two about spending public money. His approach to negotiation was to ask, "How much?," then write a check. This strategy ultimately lured Rams' owner Georgia Frontiere to town.
In fairness to Eagleton, he inherited a half-built stadium with no one to play in it, so he had precious little room to bargain. But it's also clear that Mrs. Frontiere got a sweetheart deal of biblical proportions.
Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs) were sold in Carolina to build a new stadium for the expansion Panthers. In St. Louis, we first built a stadium with public money; then required tax-paying fans to purchase licenses to buy seats in the stadium they'd just paid to build.
Money raised from the PSLs -- which sold out in two days -- went to the Rams and to pay a bribe to the league to allow them to move here. (Bidwill, incidentally, displayed the good-natured sportsmanship for which he is famous and voted against the move.)
When Georgia Frontiere passed away last year, controlling ownership of the team went to her children, Dale "Chip" Rosenbloom -- who became the managing general partner -- and his sister, Lucia Rodriguez. Their stake is valued at about $600 million. (Minority partner Stan Kroenke of Columbia, Mo., owns 40 percent of team.)
A film maker from southern California, Rosenbloom was immediately viewed with suspicion by locals. Despite repeated public statements that he intends to keep the team in St. Louis and assurances that he would sell his interest only to ownership that is committed to the city, rumors persist that he is a profiteering carpet-bagger who can't wait to get out of town.
During his brief tenure, Rosenbloom has completely revamped a dysfunctional front office, hired a new coaching staff though he is contractually obligated to continue paying the old one, and is aggressively seeking top free agents to improve the talent pool. In short, he's put his money where his mouth is and done everything you could ask a man to do to improve the product he offers fans.
Of course, we're far too shrewd to be fooled by somebody who claims to like us. Local commentators lament the cost of previously scheduled stadium improvements and speculation continues that the team will leave town when its lease expires in 2015.
This is just the kind of "can't-do" attitude that has helped make the city what it is today. By all means, let's spurn the efforts of the guy who's trying to give us the quality football we built a stadium to watch.
After all, the St. Louis Browns may be history, but the Cleveland Browns can always use a few extra fans...
M.W. Guzy is a retired St. Louis police officer who currently works for the city Sheriff's Department. His column appears weekly in the Beacon.