It started as some gossip among baseball fans after St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and All-Star hitter Albert Pujols attended Glenn Beck's 'Restoring Honor' rally last Saturday.
The team started losing. But five games later, with losses to the lowliest of their National League rivals, the gossip is becoming a minor news story.
Some believe there might be a Glenn Beck curse. Among them, Stephen Sterling of Digital Sports Daily:
Call it politics, call it a distraction, call it bad karma, call it the curse of Glenn Beck, call it whatever you want, but the St. Louis Cardinals are falling hard and falling fast. Wednesday afternoon they dropped their fifth straight game losing to the lowly Houston Astros 5-2.
With the loss they are now seven and a half games out of first place behind the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Central division.
And the Cardinals haven't won a game since manager Tony La Russa had the bizarre idea to attend an event hosted by TV/Radio Shock-Jock Glenn Beck to garner conservative support for mid-term elections.
La Russa introduced his first baseman Albert Pujols for an award given out by Beck.
But the criticism for La Russa is this: Beck's viewpoints are notably divisive, and sometimes racist. To support Beck in the middle of the season is playing with fire and asking for controversy.
Meanwhile, Tyler Reisinger at Sportsgrid.com, adds:
Although we know that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, the Cards are 0-5 since the rally, and the Cincinnati Reds are now running away with the division. Since the appearance inspired a good deal of media coverage, people are keeping track of this sort of thing.
Albert Pujols, a threat to win the Triple Crown, is hitting .118 with 1 RBI in the five games, and the Cardinals are now just seven games above .500 on the year. Throw in the momentum generated by the Reds' flame throwing sensation Aroldis Chapman, and the Cards look to be in serious jeopardy of being out of the NL Central race.
Beck is a polarizing figure, as evidenced here. So for folks of the liberal persuasion, the losing streak could be viewed as a karmic payback to the Cardinals. LaRussa won the admiration of the conservative crowd by coming out in support of the controversial Arizona Immigration Law, and conservatives may view the losing streak as some sort of socialist conspiracy. Or maybe God just wants the Reds to be good once every twenty years.