ST. LOUIS -- Ozzie's Restaurant and Sports Bar in St. Louis has a lot going for it. Clever menu items (try the "Ty Cobb Salad!"). More TVs than Circuit City. Ownership by a local sports legend (if you have to ask who…).

But last Sunday, during prime football hours, Ozzie's looked like it was bound for Chapter 11. The place was deserted. A TV the size of a drive-in screen played the Rams-49ers game, but nobody cared. A year ago, a Rams game would've packed the house, but now they're 0-5, and people in Ozzie's were more interested in watching NASCAR.

		Tony Gwynn played 20 seasons in the majors, so he should have a pretty good idea which city should own the designation of "Baseball City, USA." We asked Tony to rank the five best baseball cities, excluding San Diego (where he spent his entire career). Here's his list: 1. St. Louis 2. Chicago 3. New York 4. Philadelphia 5. San Francisco Gwynn explains his picks

"I'm not making any money today," laments waitress Julie Liszewski. "People just don't care about the Rams right now." Liszewski brings a plate of wings to the NASCAR table and returns. "I wish I was working on Wednesday."

Ah, yes, Wednesday. On Wednesday, business should be booming. On Wednesday, an Ozzie's waitress can expect hundreds of bucks in tips. On Wednesday, people will definitely care.

Today is Wednesday, and at 8:20 ET the St. Louis Cardinals kick off their National League Championship Series against the San Francisco Giants.

And at Ozzie's and everywhere else in the St. Louis area, life will come to a screeching halt. Because those Super Bowls were fun and it's nice to catch a hockey game once in a while, but let's face it -- St. Louis is a baseball town. Always will be. And not just any baseball town, but the best baseball town in the country. With the best baseball fans in the country.

Sure, that's a bold statement, obviously open to discussion. But before we begin this discussion, go catch a playoff game at Busch Stadium and see if you don't agree.

"This is a special place to play a regular-season game in April on a Wednesday night," said manager Tony La Russa. "So when you're playing a night game in October, it's electric."

Red, red everywhere
Look in the crowd and you'll see more red than WorldCom's financial books. The national anthem is belted so loudly it sounds like the crowd is miked too. And you don't have to worry about monosyllabic ogres cursing at your kids from the stands. No, Cards backers are almost always respectful; they know their stuff, and it shows. They cheer just as avidly when Mike Matheny advances a runner with a ground ball as when Albert Pujols goes yard. They realize that quality at-bats don't always result in base hits. And if an opponent makes a nice play, well, then, he hears it too. Oh, and one last thing: They hardly ever boo. Put simply, Cardinals fans are a player's fans.

	Cardinals fans have traditionally shown that they think baseball is worth the wait.

"They know the game extremely well," said second baseman Fernando Vina, who arrived in 2000 after five seasons with the Brewers. "Better than any other fans I've been around."

That's because they've been around, too. A quick tour of the Busch Stadium grounds before last Saturday's Game 3 of the NLDS against the Diamondbacks unearthed some Cardinals fans that have been rooting for so long it's second nature. Take Edgar Sittner, for example, a 71-year-old from nearby Chesterfield, Mo., who showed up early to stroll the Cardinals Hall of Fame adjacent to the ballpark. Sittner should be an exhibit himself -- the native St. Louisan has white leather shoes with red stitching, a red vinyl jacket and a white mesh hat completely covered with dozens of Cardinals patches. (Picture the suit of a Formula One driver who really, really likes the Cardinals.) And if you've got a sec, Sittner's got a story. Like this one: When he was a young boy, Sittner was so awestruck at getting Stan Musial's autograph that he started weeping. Stan The Man had to tell him, "Don't cry, kid. We won the game." A stunned Edgar stopped crying -- and instead wet himself, right there in the rightfield stands of Sportsman's Park. "Stan remembered me every time he saw me after that," Sittner laughs.

Edgar leaves the museum (after buying yet another patch) and blends into the famed Sea of Red outside the stadium. No matter which hot spot you hit -- Mike Shannon's, Paddy O's, Ozzie's -- there's red everywhere. "If you were blindfolded," says Shannon, a former Cardinal and current radio broadcaster for the team who also owns the popular steakhouse, "you'd think someone had taken you to a Nebraska football game."

And on this day the more outlandish the outfit, the better -- the mark of truly loyal fans has always been their willingness to look absurd in crunch time for the sake of their team. Paul Pagano, a fan who has gained notoriety for dressing like Father Time, makes the rounds. Ridiculous, oversized foam Cardinal heads are commonplace. Even the teenagers who think they're too cool to wear team paraphernalia manage to at least bust out the red Abercrombie sweater for the occasion. Because you can learn a lot about a team from its fans. Example: The blue-collar Cards' biggest Hollywood supporters are Billy Bob Thornton and John Goodman. Not exactly Tyra Banks grinning courtside at Staples Center.

Two women in the crowd stand out, because they're attired like this is some sort of hardball Mardi Gras, with red feather boas, tiaras and fuzzy Cardinals on their shoulders. Diane Gruchala and Peggy Nahorski also have rubber snakes draped around their neck with a plastic Cardinal perched menacingly (for a Cardinal) on top of it -- their prediction for that evening's game. And the props aren't just for the playoffs. "When we play the Cubs, I bring gummy bears and bite the heads off 'em," says Gruchala. But some of the Cards' opponents are simply too tough to prepare for. "I mean, what exactly is a Metropolitan?" Nahorski asks, waving a flag with a foam cardinal glued to the post. These season-ticket holders aren't just playing dress-up; they're diehard fans like the rest of the Cardinal Nation. Gruchala was recently pictured in a local paper peering out of her tent while camping out for NLCS tickets, and Nahorski grew up listening, with her father, to Harry Caray broadcast Cardinal games. Before they head into the stadium, they unfold a sign: "Erasing Arizona."

Extended family
Still unconvinced? Well, even if you don't believe that the Cards have the best fans in the country, they certainly must have the most. The Cards were the first major-league team west of the Mississippi River, so they collected fans from Little Rock to Los Angeles. And once the Cardinals make long-range fans, flagship station KMOX makes sure they keep them. On a clear night, KMOX and its gaggle of affiliates pumped Shannon and the late Jack Buck's broadcasts to 46 states and six Canadian provinces. Talk about a wide fan base.

	“	Once you put on those birds on the bat (the Cardinals' logo), you're a member of the family. ”
		— Marty Hendin, Cardinals' VP of community relations

"If the game doesn't come on, we've got people around the country that want to know what's happening," says Shannon.

Game 3 of the NLDS is Cards fans' first chance to show off in the 2002 postseason, and it's obvious early on that they're already in playoff shape. Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson may be on the opposing Diamondbacks, but St. Louis fans give them loud, respectful cheers in pregame introductions. And La Russa had barely cleared the dugout steps for his second visit in the fifth inning when the crowd, knowing it meant the end of the night for starting pitcher Andy Benes, burst into a standing ovation. The whole night the Busch fans cheered so hard, even on routine plays, that some people in the press box thought they had missed something. "They were so loud it made me a little nervous," laughed left fielder Pujols after the Cards had clinched. "It was really crazy out there."

As Vina summed up: "You can really get spoiled playing here."

The fans would argue it's the other way around. With nine World Series titles (second only to the Yankees), they're grateful for the continued success. So they keep cheering, instinctively. Especially given all this team has been through this season, losing Buck and Darryl Kile, the crowd is going to keep cheering until they go hoarse.

Part of the cycle is self-perpetuating -- the fans take their duties so seriously because they've been told what good fans they are, and feel they have an obligation to uphold. But whatever the motivation, the fans are a major reason players come to St. Louis and never leave.

"When we first got Mark McGwire in 1997, we tried to think of something unique to make him feel welcome," said Marty Hendin, Cards vice president of community relations. "But in the end, I just told the fans to do what they'd normally do. And, of course, Mark fell in love with the place."

It's happening again with third baseman Scott Rolen. Rolen was booed daily before he was traded from Philadelphia and as soon as he got to St. Louis, he stumbled into a two-for-32 slump. Still, the fans cheered him like the pope every time he came up, and he recently signed an eight-year deal in September.

"They're always behind you, even when you're struggling," said Vina. "In other places, you'd probably get booed. Not here."

In fact, the closest the crowd comes to booing is when they shriek "DRREEEEWWW!" when J.D. Drew gets up. And the players find ways to repay the fans -- some Cardinals have been known to hop behind the bar and serve up some cold ones at Paddy O's, the green-awning postgame haunt both players and fans frequent.

And unlike some grudge-holding bleacher creatures, the St. Louis fans are more than willing to bury the hatchet. When he was a member of the Giants, Will Clark got into an onfield scrap with Cards shortstop (and future sports bar owner) Ozzie Smith and second baseman Jose Oquendo after a hard slide. But Clark became a Cardinal at the twilight of his career and wound up a club favorite after a few well-timed homers. "Once you put on those birds on the bat," says Hendin, referring to the Cardinals' logo, "you're a member of the family."

And a word of warning to the Giants tonight: If there is one surefire way an opponent can incur the wrath of the leather-throated Busch masses, it's to mess with a member of that family. After colliding with Rolen and causing his strained shoulder in Game 2, Arizona infielder Alex Cintron got unloaded upon during pregame introductions in Game 3.

Still, the greatest fans in baseball take pride in being fair to both friend and foe. As Nahorski says, "We only boo you if you really, really, really deserve it." And mostly, the fans are too focused on supporting their team to worry about heckling the other one. "When it gets right down to it," says Sittner, "booing the other guys is mostly a waste of time. All we care about is the Cardinals winning."

And as you'd imagine, the folks over at Ozzie's feel the same way. Of course, that's partly because they're Cardinal fans. But it's also much better for business.