Traffic observations on the east coast

In recent weeks, I’ve written about both our recent auto trip to the east coast and my St. Louis Cardinals. I have a “P.S.” for both subjects.

First, the trip. 

Last week, I wrote about the “Help Wanted” signs we saw everywhere along the way. This week, because we motored through the Boston, New York and Philadelphia areas, I’m writing about the traffic.

In Boston, I’m convinced, there’s no such thing as a moving violation (as brother Bill once told me). We approached the city from the west via the Massachusetts Turnpike. The closer we got, the heavier the traffic, and the faster it went.

I had expected cars and trucks to slow down as the posted speed limit dropped. Silly me. 

Drivers apparently took slower posted speeds as an incentive to floor the accelerator. 

I customarily drive five miles over the speed limit. In Iowa, and most of the way easterly, that practice worked: I kept abreast of most of the traffic. 

Not so in eastern Massachusetts. There, I cranked it up to seven MPH above the posted limit, and still failed miserably to keep pace. When there were three lanes of traffic or more going my way, and I was in the middle lane, cars and trucks on both sides of me whizzed by, and the driver immediately behind me tried to scrape the numbers off my license plate.

I really don’t understand the rationale for speed limit signs in the Boston area. They’re not even suggestions – they’re more like challenges. 

The same was true to a lesser extent around New York City and Philadelphia. Not until we approached Baltimore was I able to exhale, and even then not entirely – as had been the case to the north, some cars blazed past me going at least 90 MPH, probably faster.

Not once did I see any of the go-fast boys stopped by state police. I don’t know where the highway patrol officers were – maybe down in Texas guarding the border. They certainly didn’t see fit to pull over anyone on the interstate.

Given the uselessness of speed limits, I’m all for the federal infrastructure bill that’s plodding its way through Congress. If officers aren’t going to enforce posted speed limits, then adding more lanes to the nation’s highways may be the alternative for safer travel. More lanes would give the Speedway wannabes more space to do their thing, and leave us fogeys to plod along at only a few miles an hour over the limit.

To obey the law is to invite catastrophe on today’s east coast interstates.

Second subject: the Cardinals.

A few months ago (on June 17, to be exact) the Cards had fallen on hard times, so much so that I felt impelled to write them into a column. Their pitching staff was decimated by injuries, their vaunted sluggers didn’t measure up, and they maddeningly failed to produce at key junctures game after game.

But I noted at the time that “fan faith runs deep with St. Louis. They believe in the organization’s management, on the field and in the front office. If the team falters, as it’s doing now,” I wrote, “the history of the squad’s owners and coaches is one of finding solutions and implementing them.”

“ . . . I fully expect improvement,” the column continued. “Pulled muscles heal, batting slumps end, and losing streaks go away.”

My record at predictions, in sports, politics, and many other topics, is less than admirable. But, as they say, a blind hog finds an acorn once in awhile. 

As I write this column on Sunday, Sept. 26, the Cards have just won their 16th game in a row, a Cardinal team record since the founding of the organization back in the late 1800s. The last National League team to reach 16 straight wins was the New York (now San Francisco) Giants in 1951, seven decades ago.

The final six Cardinal games of the regular season are all at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

The Cards are now a virtual lock to vie for a National League playoff spot. They will face either the Giants or the Los Angeles Dodgers in a one-game playoff qualifying game, and if they win that contest, they’ll have to take on the other western division team (Dodgers or Giants) in a five-game playoff series.

St. Louis will not be the favorite, in either the one-game or the five-game event. But their chances of getting hot at the end of the season with (at least) 16 straight wins were pretty slim as well. 

That’s baseball, and for a 75-year Cardinals fan, it’s pretty darn exciting. 

Go Cards!