Jeff you have all ways been a puzzlement to me as to how you became a Cards fan.
Most of my family hailed from StL. I became a baseball Cardinal first at 5 (during '44 Cards vs. Browns World Series) and expanded my Cardinal loyalty to include the Chicago football Cardinals sometime in 1946.
I vaguely remember the football Cardinals having sucky teams until the '47 Championship season so I know I was rooting for them at least a couple of seasons prior to that year.
Early football (and for that matter, baseball) rooting consisted of asking my Dad each day when he came home from work: "Did the Cardinals win today?"
I didn't see my first baseball Cardinal game til I was a teenager or early college (Saw them at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn).
First time I saw the football Cardinals was when they were on TV (the snow game vs. the Eagles for the Championship). Since the TV was black & white, for several years I thought the Cardinals wore Oakland-type Black unis with white helmets.
First "live" Cardinal game was vs. the Giants - at Yankee Stadium in the early sixties. I was trying to score some Cardinal-Giant tix from work in Manhattan when the lady on the phone asked: "Would you like Giant season tickets?" "Hold four!" I exclaimed and immediately called my Dad (who was the keeper of all money) and asked him to meet me an hour later in front of the Giant ticket office at Columbus Circle.
That started a great family tradition of my Dad, brother, friend of the family and me meeting for breakfast Sunday mornings at the Madison Delicatessin (86th & Madison) while the folks there wrapped up hero sandwiches which we then lugged on the Lexington Ave. subway to take to the game.
Much of the time, I was more busy watching for the Cardinal score than I was the action on the field, but I did get to see guys like Jimmy Brown, Charley Conerly and YA Tittle play football. And I was at the famous "Best Championship Game Ever Played" when the Colts' Alan Ameche plunged through a hole big enough to drive a truck through to beat the Giants (pretty neat, since I was attending college in Baltimore at the time and, as usual, rooted against the Giants).
Incidently, for those who don't know their Jersey geography - John Holt lived in Wrightstown, NJ which was (and still is) the "company town" for the Fort Dix and McGuire AFB military complex. Which probably means, John, that you grew up an army brat, no?
PS There is more to the season ticket story. Much to my consternation, my Dad gave up the season tickets during my senior year at college (because he "didn't think we were still interested." Grrrr!). But several years later - when the Giants moved from Yale Bowl to the Meadowlands - they opened up an additional 30,000 season tickets. Two of us waited for the "on-sale" announcement in the paper and placed our order at 7:05 am the day they went on sale. We wound up on the waiting list for a year, but finally wound up with 2 season tickets - last row, upper deck, north end zone. I got the tix so I could see the Cardinals play and, for several years, I'd sell the rest to friends. I finally gave them up when they doubled the price; preferring to use the money to see ALL Cardinal games via DirecTV.
