Will McDonald of Royals Review has a really good post looking at the relationship between the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals in the state of Missouri.
He poses the question: Can the Royals once again become Missouri's team?
The first step, as he points out, is an easy one to figure out -- win. Just win and the Royals will be on their way. Along with that, though, the Cardinals need to be bad -- really bad -- he writes.
At the same time, the Cardinals need to decline. The Cardinals need to become truly bad, or, at the very least, mediocre. That more or less happened in the 1990s, so it's not an impossibility, despite the best fans in baseball. You can certainly see the Cardinals playing out the next five years with increasingly old and expensive teams, designed to squeeze out what they can from the Pujols/Holliday core. Those periods usually don't end well, at all.
That's assuming the Cardinals do indeed lock Albert Pujols up to a long-term contract. He predicts the Royals need to make the playoffs two or three times in the next decade for this to happen.
Check out the full story at Royals Review. It's a really good look at the relationship between the two teams in the same state.