THE I-70 SERIES : It’s Like the Highway to Heaven If You Are a Real Baseball Fan

The world, as in World Series, has been shrunk considerably this week, and is easily traveled by some 250 miles of interstate highway.

Kansas City to St. Louis, it’s I-70 all the way, through rolling country, all of it gone golden for the presumed pleasure of those in the big charter buses, traveling back and forth to watch the only baseball there is.

They call it the I-70 Series, of course, in honor of this connecting line, which for this week, anyway, is drawing the two very different cities in upon one another. It is a taut line as Kansas City historically stretches out toward the West and the prairies beyond, whereas St. Louis reaches toward the East, grabbing for culture.

Still, there is baseball and for this once it brings them, and especially everybody in between, together.

Visible on the right, just upon leaving Kansas City on I-70, is the Harry S. Truman Sports Complex. This is where the Royals, Missouri’s American League entrant, play baseball. From there the freeway plunges on into suburbia, which looks like any other city’s. It finally plunges into Blue Springs, the last of the suburbs, the last of civilization.

In Blue Springs, just 20 miles east of Kansas City, attorney Jack Cochran leans out of his office window, over a Royals sign he and his partners have made. His wife Leslie admires the work from below.

“It’s just great to be from Missouri,” she says. “People out in Los Angeles and in New York, they think we’re in the sticks.”

The attention of the World Series, she believes, will prove otherwise. “That we don’t live in some hick town.”

There is this theme, that the in-house spectacle will confer a new prestige on this state. But not many consider that big. More immediately at hand is the renewal of an old rivalry, not so much Missouri against the Union but us against St. Louis.

Jack Cochran says the Kansas City-St. Louis antagonism is an old thing. “What it boils down to, is that St. Louis is the westernmost city in the East, while Kansas City is easternmost city in the West.”

What, exactly, does that mean, he is asked. “Well, I think if you wore boots in St. Louis, you might look pretty weird.”

So St. Louis, it is proposed, thinks itself more cosmopolitan? “Oh, they are more cosmopolitan,” says Cochran. “No doubt about it. On the other hand, the Royals should kill the Cardinals.”

Suburbia yields quickly beyond Blue Springs. Soon the only merchants facing the interstate are those offering farm equipment. Big red combines and yellow tractors stand in front of their establishments. It is farther from house to house, which now all seem to have their own propane tanks and their own satellite dishes. Water towers signal the occasional towns.

This is farm country and lots of it. The fields, which are about all you’ll see for the next 200 miles, are studded with bailed hay, rolled like giant biscuits of Shredded Wheat. Cows graze among them.

Sweet Springs (pop. 1,694), the Small Town with a Big Heart is just 60 miles down the pike and our first stop along I-70. It appears to be closed for the day. The cobble-stone streets are deserted and many of the store fronts are empty. Sweet Springs, in fact, may well be closed for more than just the day.

Four older men sit motionless on a bench in front of the Nichols Apts., down from the B&B; Cue and Schotzie’s (Good Beer), passing the late afternoon. Sweet Springs, they admit, might be just past its prime.

“Bigger towns eat up the small towns,” says Jack Forsythe. “Now you about have to go to Sedalia or Marshall, though Marshall don’t have the things like Sedalia.” Forsythe, arms folded, spits tobacco juice by way of punctuation.

He adjusts his cap and addresses himself to the World Series. “Oh, I don’t go gung-ho, but I’ll watch the game. Nothing else to do.”

What is there to do, it is wondered. Dusty Rhodes, arms also folded, says, “Sit on this bench.” He spits.

Victor Dierker, as the bona fide baseball fan of Sweet Springs, is eventually brought forth, this after each of the four men has said, “I sure wish you could talk to Vic,” as if Victor had passed to another dimension. In fact, Victor is right inside, more or less waiting to be summoned.

This is Royals country, he says, “though, in my own mind, St. Louis will beat them.” The men consider what Victor has said and nod and spit. Victor goes back inside. “You all ought to go up to Sedalia,” Forsythe says, as an afterthought.

Boonville has been trumpeted as the middle of Missouri, though that is not quite right. Most people give Midway, just a few miles east of it, that distinction.

But that’s not quite right, either. At least it isn’t anymore. Early travelers, crossing the state on the Santa Fe Trail, counted the revolutions of their wagon wheels and so decided Midway was midway. But I-70 doesn’t exactly follow the same path.

In any event, Boonville is clearly divided by this World Series. The dynamics are explained by Steve Schrader, 24, “the one and only” in a bar that has no name, a bar that has sidestepped the whole issue, incidentally, by offering both red and blue beer, 40 cents a glass.

“Kansas City is not a conservative team,” he says, over a bottle of Busch. “St. Louis is a conservative team, the exact opposite. Traditional.”

He continues: “Take Boonville. The half of Boonville in Cooper County is Republican, old German families that tend be more conservative. Across the river, in Boone County, they vote Democrat. Who’s losing their farms?” He points behind him, in the direction of the Missouri. “They spend too much money.”

More beer is bought and consumed. “Here’s my point. When you’re conservative, when you realize you’re going to work the rest of your life, you get down to basics, like baseball. K.C. impresses me as a kind of team that would rather look good than be good. Except for Brett, of course. The Cardinals are a team that’s down to earth, they play in a realistic fashion.”

So it’s all a matter of politics? The logic seems as tortuous as the Missouri River, which will cross I-70 several more times.

“It’s all a matter of politics,” he says. Suddenly he looks at his watch. “I have to be at a wedding in 15 minutes,” he says. He is wearing bib overalls. More beer is bought.

Jimmy Ray Kluck’s Hallway, “fish fry serving at approx. 7 p.m. sharp,” is eventually recommended as the primary Kansas City outpost in Boonville. Jimmy Ray Kluck, a sumo wrestler in flannel, with a face the size of a stop sign, happens to be there. He is, for some reason, combing out a woman’s hair.

“I’m Jimmy Ray Kluck,” he says, hearing an inquiry about him. He pivots on one leg to face the inquisitor--a Cardinal fan come to torment him? Jimmy Ray has no eyes as can be determined. He continually shifts from one foot to the other.

“I been taking a lot of guff,” he says, explaining his defensiveness. “This is a very divided state but, still, there are more Cardinals fans than K.C. fans. More established.”

Jimmy Ray, at 32, represents the younger generation, the kind of fan more likely to root for the Royals than the Cards. “The younger people root for the Royals and drink Lite beer,” he says. “The older ones come in here and root for the Cardinals and drink Budweiser.”

Both are on tap, incidentally, at 50 cents a pull. Observation: You can drink real cheap in middle Missouri.

Jimmy Ray handles several friendly bets over the phone, giving complicated odds. “I got $200 on the Royals,” he says. “That’s not too strong for me but then I’m betting with my heart on this one, not my head.”

Then it’s not a matter of politics, necessarily?

“Well, how would you figure that,” Jimmy Ray threatens. If he’s so liberal, what’s John Wayne doing looking down from his wall?

More beer is bought and talk turns to early K.C. heroes--Jim Gentile and Roger Maris. The game eventually starts on the television but no young people come in to order Lite beer and cheer the Royals. A man at the end of the bar, the only one watching, says, “I wish they’d get the whole boring thing over.”

Truth be told, Columbia is the real Midway. It’s 125 miles either way to a major league stadium. That little known fact is suggested by Doc Wulff, who has borrowed a crane from his brother’s construction firm to hang a huge banner over I-70. The side presented to Kansas City-bound traffic says “Go Cards.” East-bound traffic sees, “Go Royals.”

Wulff says the sign, “was about a six-case job.” In any event it was motivated less out of cheering interest than state pride. “When that Cosell shot off his mouth about how boring a World Series in Missouri would be, well, the minute the Royals won, I got to work on my sign.”

In fact, there is as much reference to Howard Cosell on the sign as there is to the I-70 series.

But turns out the real fun is just hanging around the crane, hearing all the honks from Cardinal fans as they see their side and then seeing the shock as they turn back and see the Royals’ side.

“People been stopping all day to take pictures,” Wulff says. “One guy in a Z-car pops out of the sun-roof as the car’s coming down the road and the wind blows the camera right out of his hands. Funniest thing.”

Doc Wulff is a mild Royal fan and brother Bill is more the Cardinal fan. Bill remembers growing up with the Cardinals.

In fact, he remembers the last all-Missouri series when the Browns played the Cardinals in 1944. “We brought a radio to our school,” he says. “That was a big thing.”

Bigger than this? “Well, not hardly. That was all in St. Louis. Now we got a freeway.”

What’s a freeway series without one?

It’s Sunday now, and Middle Missouri is quiet on Sundays, the taverns closed, the wide screens blank. No liquor is served on Sundays. But in Daniel Boone Memorial Park, in Warrenton, two softball teams break for a pony of Busch.

“You bet, Busch,” says one of the players. “You’re in Cardinal country.”

Thomas Scott, 24, says Warrenton, one more farm town along I-70, is distant enough from Kansas City that it doesn’t even think about it, never has.

“As far as a rival, you’d be talking about Chicago,” he says. “That’s blood, guts and war. Kansas City, that’s kind of new. Glad for it, of course, to be in Missouri one way or another.”

Another player says they should get together and make a sign to hang by the freeway, one that authorities would leave hanging. “We had some signs at first but they were pretty filthy,” he says. “We should try and think of one that’s not.”

They think for a minute but nothing comes to mind so they have more beer and play a second game.

The exits on I-70 come quicker east of Warrenton and traffic begins to be a problem. The towns with the water towers for town squares give way to subdivisions.

The fields have been replaced by vast malls and the suburbs look like those of any other city.

St. Louis, hung in red, is suddenly presented. The stadium is on the right, just before the Gateway Arch and just before I-70 crosses the Mississippi River into Illinois.

To go farther, this week, is to step off the end of the world.