You’ve got a week. Seven days to be your normal self, the serene, sane soul you are when the St. Louis Cardinals aren’t in season. A week from Sunday, the Cardinals will play the Pittsburgh Pirates, and you will morph into Baseball You, this irrational version of yourself that allows 25 strangers to become marionettes of your being, and your well-being.

The Cardinals weigh. They weigh on you, on your sanity, on your conscience. But it’s a welcomed weight, and worth the wait, because when baseball begins, you are rejuvenated, your priorities askew, as you’re Baseball You.

Baseball You allows the Cardinals into every aspect of your life: what you wear, what you watch, what you think about certain cities, what you talk about with friends or strangers who also speak “Cardinals.”

Baseball You lets a game control your emotions, to the point that sometimes you can’t control your emotions. Baseball You thinks that old John Wooden quote is poppycock, because you get too high after a win and too low after a loss, and even though it’s May against the Brewers, you worry that the loss will have a direct effect on the Cardinals’ playoff chances, and even though, come on man, it’s only May, the reality is that loss just might effect the playoffs.