Open Mike: In the Booth With Moon Man Mike Shannon

It’s 10 minutes until the first pitch, and Mike Shannon, bespectacled, hunched over a copy of the Miami Marlins’ spring roster in the broadcast booth, is working on the name of today’s opposing pitcher, Wei-Yin Chen.

“How do you pronounce this guy’s name?” Shannon says in his gravelly timbre.

“Way-in. Chen,” says fellow broadcaster Mike Claiborne, seated to Shannon’s left. “Like way in on the infield.”

“Way-in. Chen?”

“Right.”

“Just want to make sure we’re on the same page,” says Shannon.

When Shannon first started broadcasting, 44 years ago, a mispronunciation, a malaprop, or a colorful quip was acceptable, even endearing, to a like-minded regional audience. Shannonisms such as It’s raining like a Chinese fire drill! and I just want to wish everybody a Happy Easter or Happy Hanukkah are popular, if not necessarily PC, cocktail shorthand in St. Louis. But today, when the play-by-play can be streamed digitally to Chen’s native Taiwan and every sentence can be replayed, dissected, and decried on social media, global listeners expect the spot-on elocution of a Joe Buck or Dan McLaughlin. A slip of the tongue or cultural insensitivity here or there could get a young broadcaster in trouble. “Now whatever you say has to jump over six different hurdles and go through five different filters,” says Buck. “It’s taken some of that personality away.”

At 76, Shannon’s personality is more outsized than ever—hurdles and filters be damned. This morning, he showed up at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida, before 9 a.m. for an afternoon spring game, the seat of his black corduroys covered in dust that couldn’t quite be swept away with his hand. He carried a paper cup of coffee and a red plastic shopping bag containing his black-rimmed reading glasses; copies of the The New York Post, The Palm Beach Post, and the Daily Racing Form; and four warm bottles of water. (Despite frequently slurring into the late innings about “cold frosty ones,” Shannon never drinks while broadcasting.) He huffed up four flights of stairs to the press box—both a moment of quiet from an elevator full of Cardinal fans whom he loves but who all think they know him and a quick workout for an ex-jock who underwent heart surgery three years ago: “Two birds,” he says, “with that stone. Heh-heh-heh.”

Once in the booth, he cracks wise to Claiborne about the “decimal” level of the PA rock music rattling the windows. (“This guy works at a disco, somewhere.”) He laments the absence of the Pilates ball he’s sat on for almost a decade to keep him in motion and allow him to exercise between innings. And when he learns that St. Louis Post-Dispatch beat writer Derrick Goold tweeted at 9:03 a.m. that today’s starting first baseman, Matt Holliday, has been scratched from the lineup because of tightness in his lower back, Shannon waits about an hour for confirmation by way of more traditional means—a call from a team gofer from the clubhouse to Shannon’s flip phone—before adjusting his lineup card. (“The whole f—ing thing has changed. Oh man, what a mess.”) Then he dutifully walks down the hall to inform his Spanish-language broadcast counterparts. “Que paso?” he says, in a hard Midwestern accent. “I only want two cervezas,” he says, joking. “Heh-heh-heh.”

By the time first pitch rolls around, even though it’s only an early spring training exhibition, Shannon is at the edge of his uncomfortable chair, almost sticking his head out the press-box window, feeding off the energy of the fans in red packing the stands below. “History could be made every time I go to that ballpark,” he had said previously. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

Now on the air, Claiborne introduces Chen and the first three Cardinal batters: “Brought to you by Sapaugh Motors…where everyone leaves happy.”

“Happy, happy, happy,” says Shannon. “You know who sang that song?”

Claiborne: “Uhhhh…Pharrell?”

“You’re right on,” says Shannon, “and right on it today, too, is this weather. It is really…magnificent down here, today. We have some cloud cover. It’s gonna be up near 80, and the wind is blowing in from right field as Chen fires the first pitch of the day, and it’s a steeerike called.”

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It’s become the sound of St. Louis spring and summer—the squeaky growl of Mike Shannon calling balls and steeerikes right down Central on the AM dial. The absurd and hilarious fumbles of phrase; the tangential, meandering stories, punctuated by the sloshy chuckle—heh-heh-heh—that conjures images of the old man, a few frosty ones in by the fifth inning.

“People used to ask me: ‘What’s Shannon drinking up there?’” says former broadcast partner Joe Buck. “That’s just him.”

Shannon just being Shannon has always been enough—because he is his audience. “I don’t think he’d be as successful a broadcaster in a lot other cities,” says former Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog, “but he’s a fit here in St. Louis. He speaks the language of the people in this area.” There’s no façade, no slick broadcasting-school delivery. With the bare accent of a born-and-bred St. Louisan, Shannon has taught two generations of Redbirds fans about Ol’ Abner’s game. His is the unvarnished voice that shares a six-pack with them at the kitchen table, rocks beside them on their front porches, and crackles through their car radios somewhere in the wastelands of Oklahoma, Arkansas, or Southern Illinois and guides them home. Above all, he’s a fan—unabashedly rooting for a Cardinal win, unyieldingly critical when it doesn’t come, and (wheee!) gleeful when it does. “Mike is one of us,” says Dan McLaughlin, who grew up in St. Louis listening to Shannon and Jack Buck before following them into the booth 16 years ago. “He does what the guy listening would do. That’s what makes him real.”

With a fanbase that speaks in the royal “we” as part of a team and organization that claims to stand for the old way of doing things—fundamentals, loyalty, citizenship—it is only right that the voice of the Cardinals is a throwback. Combining the candor and exuberance of Harry Caray with the joviality and wisdom of Jack Buck, Shannon is one of the last true entertainers in the booth.

And just as other entertainers such as the Dodgers’ Vin Scully and the Padres’ Dick Enberg have announced their full retirements after the 2016 season, Shannon has also signaled that even he won’t be around forever. In mid-January, just days after news that Mike Shannon’s Steaks and Seafood would be closing its downtown location across the street from the new team-owned Ballpark Village after 30 years, the team proclaimed that for the first time since 1972, Shannon had decided not to broadcast any road games this year. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family, including his new wife, Lori.

Cardinals fans are not losing their voice—this isn’t goodbye. But Shannon’s scaling back is a sign to Cards fans to tune in to as many home games as they can.

“Enjoy every minute,” says former manager Tony La Russa. “I’d make sure that you never take him for granted.”

Almost everyone knows Mike Shannon.

On an escape from the booth, hours before the game, he makes the rounds of Roger Dean. He hides his grayish-blue eyes behind sunglasses, even on this overcast morning. His gait is long and athletic; his hands, thick and strong, reveal the ballplayer hidden beneath the paunch and salt-and-pepper hair. For a man who makes his living sitting in a chair (or on a Pilates ball), Shannon doesn’t stand still for very long. He blows through like a cyclone, not necessarily waiting for responses, leaving smiles, shaking heads, and looks of utter bewilderment in his wake.   

He starts with Cardinal player workouts on the adjacent practice field. He hollers at Trevor Rosenthal, “Nice dab the other day! Not bad for your first time.” A quick wave at the media pool watching from the sidelines: “Commish,” he says waving a lottery ticket at Post-Dispatch columnist Rick Hummel. He then chats up Seth Maness about the pitcher’s native North Carolina: “Know where Durham is? What do you know about the horses up there?” Not paying attention, Shannon almost gets knocked in the head with a bat being absently swung by pitching instructor Jason Simontacchi.

“Whoa!” says Simontacchi. “Look out!”

“Eh,” says Shannon. “You’re just like me—you can’t hit anything.”

The group of instructors laughs.

“What are you laughing at?” says Shannon, singling out another less-than-accomplished batsman. “Heh-heh-heh.”

Suddenly an old man wearing a navy Cards cap hollers from the parking lot on the other side of the chain-link fence: “Hey, Shannon! There was some girl looking for you.”

“There’s always some girl looking for me!” Shannon jokes. “What’d you tell her?”

“I told her you were hanging around.”

“Then I’m getting out of here,” says Shannon. “Heh-heh. That’s a warning.”

He ducks into the clubhouse, says hello to the PR man (“Thanks for taking care of that thing!”), pokes his head into the video guy’s cave (“What was Walden throwing yesterday? Sinker?”), darts through the kitchen, dodging workers carrying metal trays of bread loaves and lunchmeat and crates of dishes (“Good to see you, Mr. Shannon.” “Good to be seen!”) and exiting past a security guard whose nose is buried in an Ann Rule true-crime book (“Haven’t you finished that one yet?”).

After a brief stop by the booth, Shannon heads out onto the main field, where the Marlins are taking batting practice. There, behind the cage, he greets sportswriter Peter Gammons with a handshake before walking up to Japanese superstar Ichiro (“Hey, Itch-iro!”) Suzuki and asking what he thinks about the Redbirds’ new Korean reliever, Seung Hwan Oh (simply referring to him as “Oh”).

“What team does he play for?” responds Suzuki.

After watching a bit of batting practice, Shannon heads back toward the booth through the stands, already littered with fans in Cardinal red. The older men and women immediately ask “Mike” for an autograph, and the middle-aged yell for “Mr. Shannon” to pose for a selfie. (“How can it be a selfie if I’m in it? We need a new word. How about an ‘ussie’?”) Meanwhile the kids, decked in caps and jerseys and carrying their gloves, don’t quite know what to make of the scene. Their parents and grandparents nudge them ahead and introduce them to the Cardinals broadcaster. He asks where they’re from, what grade, why they’re not in school. (Heh-heh-heh.) He signs every baseball, hat, and article of clothing that is pushed on him. Even as the sky opens up into a brief Florida downpour, he stands in the rain until each request is met.

Shannon was born a Cardinals fan, the son of a St. Louis cop working his way through law school. Growing up, he idolized Red Schoendienst and Stan Musial. Harry Caray’s was the voice he heard in his head as he threw and fielded a tennis ball off the terrace steps of his family’s home on Winona Avenue, just eight miles south of Sportsman’s Park.

It was the 1940s and ’50s, before free agency, when ballplayers played for one team their entire careers. Salaries had not yet skyrocketed, carrying the star athlete into an elite class of citizenry. No matter the birthplace printed on the back of his baseball card, a Cardinal was considered an honorary St. Louisan, a hometown boy. And for Shannon, that connection to his heroes was more than just figurative. One of his schoolmates at Christian Brothers College High School was Stan Musial’s son, Dick. “I’d always go over to their house,” says Shannon. “Stan was a dad to me.”

Shannon was a three-sport star at CBC. He was probably better at football than baseball, a high-school All-American at quarterback his senior year. He accepted a football scholarship to Mizzou, where, legend has it, coach Frank Broyles predicted a Heisman candidacy. But baseball was his first love. In 1958, Shannon signed with the Cardinals for a bonus of close to $50,000.

In the minors, he was an instant hit with teammates and coaches, hanging around the clubhouse after games to talk baseball over beers. He was always up for wagering his $4 food per diem on a card game on the team bus or at the hotel. “He was an adventurous poker player,” says Tim McCarver, who came up through the Cards system alongside Shannon. “He stayed in a lot of hands.” In Triple-A Portland, Shannon earned the nickname Moon Man—he says because of the moon shots he’d hit. Over time, other explanations worked their way into the myth. One held that the moniker stemmed from the way he appeared to float while dodging a pitch thrown behind him. Another reasoned it was because of the way he seemed to drift from topic to topic in conversation, leaving teammates confused as to what exactly had been said.

When he wasn’t with the team, Shannon was with his family. He married his high school sweetheart, Judy, about six months after signing with St. Louis, and his burgeoning family followed him everywhere. Every spring, he and Judy pulled the kids from school for an extended Florida vacation. Judy oversaw their schoolwork in between midday visits to the ballpark and afternoon fishing trips. “Dad befriended many local fishermen and boat captains,” says Tim Shannon, one of Mike’s six children. “We’d fish well past midnight and catch everything from snook to stingrays to sharks.”

In 1963, Judy was pregnant with their fourth child when she was bedridden with illness. Shannon missed the first part of that season with Triple-A Atlanta to stay home and care for his family. But she recouped by July, just in time for the Cardinals to call him up as an occasional late-game replacement for the retiring Musial during his farewell tour. And it was when the rookie was plugged into No. 6’s left-field spot at the last minute, before a late-season stop in Chicago, that Shannon was welcomed to The Show by a Cards fan in the Wrigley bleachers. Hey Shannon, said the fan. Where’s Musial? You mean I drove 750 miles to watch you? “He had brought his son,” says Shannon. “Can you imagine his disappointment? I went back and told Stan, and he signed a ball for me to throw to him. Stan thought a lot about that sort of thing. He felt that kind of responsibility [to the fans].”  

Shannon secured his own place in the hearts of Cardinals fans the following year. It was Game 1 of the 1964 World Series at Busch Stadium I, and the home team trailed the Yankees 4–2. With one down in the sixth and Ken Boyer at second, Shannon turned on a Whitey Ford hanging slider and hit the U in the Budweiser sign atop the 75-foot-tall scoreboard, tying the game. The Cards would go on to win Game 1 by a score of 9–5 and take the series four games to three.

Some might argue that Shannon’s greatest contribution as a player, however, came three years later, when he agreed to move from right field to third base, where he’d never played, to make room for Roger Maris. “He put the team first,” says McCarver, the catcher on that 1967 squad, which went on to win the franchise’s eighth championship. “If Mike doesn’t make that move, the whole thing doesn’t work.” McCarver recalls spring training, when Shannon was fielding grounders off his chest, then picking them up and throwing them back to manager Schoendienst, who would pelt him again. “He’s as tough as anybody,” says McCarver.

Shannon’s toughness was truly tested three years later. During a spring training physical, doctors discovered that Shannon had glomerulonephritis, a rare and potentially deadly inflammation of the kidneys. Team doctors told him that any exercise, let alone playing, could kill him. After a month of rest, Shannon returned to the lineup, receiving a standing ovation from the home crowd in his first at-bat. But his condition worsened, and he was sidelined for the rest of the season. He would never play again. “The outlook for his survival was grim,” says Tim Shannon. “He and Mom did a good job insulating us kids from that chaos. But he pulled through against all odds.”

Shannon was a 31-year-old father of five. First, the Cardinals gave him a job in promotions (How’s about a rodeo on the Busch Stadium turf, Auggie?). They offered him a minor-league managing position, but he turned it down to stay closer to home. Then, before the 1972 season, a spot opened up in the KMOX booth beside Jack Buck. The team asked him whether he had ever considered broadcasting. “Never,” said Shannon. “Never in my life.”

It’s the fifth inning, and Shannon is entertaining the booth with an off-air story about driving the wagon behind the Budweiser Clydesdales with Roger Maris and “The Boss,” August A. Busch Jr. (“If it hadn’t been for those ridges on the sides of that wagon, all three of our asses would’ve been on the ground, Heh-heh-heh.”) He and his new partner, Rick Horton, focus their on-air attention on the new Cardinal pitcher, J.C. Sulbaran.

“J.C. Sulbaran, 6-2, 220, from Curaçao,” says Horton. “Played at the University of Florida in college after playing for the Dutch national team.”

“That island is still, uh, run by the Dutch, if I’m not mistaken,” says Shannon. “He’s been around. And the delivery is outside. Count’s even now at 1–1. I always got a kick out of a story about Yogi Berra. He had the label of the bat turned upside down. The catcher said, ‘Hey Yogi, your label’s upside down.’ Yogi said, ‘I didn’t bring it up here to read.’ Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

“Classic Yogi, right?” says Horton, slightly confused as to where the story came from but laughing along nonetheless.

“You’ve got to be ready for that,” Horton had said earlier about working with Shannon. “Something reminds Mike of a story, and there he goes.”

Horton, the former Cardinal lefty who’s now in his 12th season of broadcasting, will be the voice replacing Shannon on the road this season, and the producers have been working Horton in with Shannon on these spring broadcasts to ease the transition. “He’s been very helpful to me,” says Horton. He says Shannon has taught him the nuances between radio and TV, and between being a broadcaster and a reporter. “He leads by example,” says Horton.

Forty-four years ago, the image of Shannon as microphone mentor would have been as preposterous as any Shannonism. His on-air voice was raw, his diction and grammar abysmal. He had no real delivery. And he didn’t know any of the technical aspects of the business, the signs and cues. His new partner, the legendary Jack Buck, used to tell the story of one of Shannon’s first spring training games, when Buck asked the rookie broadcaster whether he had retrieved the lineups. Did you get the umpires? Shannon hadn’t, so he left and returned to the booth with the four umpires—the actual men in blue.

“Mike is one of the most consistent inconsistent people I’ve ever known,” says Joe Buck. “He is one of the most street-smart people I’ve ever met. He just has a way of figuring things out… He’s a guy who can find his way to a tee time on any golf course or a corner fishing hole anywhere in the world.”

“I have a poor radio voice,” Shannon said at the time. “I’m not the guy with the golden lungs…nowhere close. I’ll probably be moving out of this business into raising cattle eventually.” Many listeners would’ve gladly sent Shannon to the stockyards—rumors of and calls for Shannon’s ouster persisted into the late 1970s. But the team, and particularly Buck, stood by him. Buck would later say he saw Shannon’s playing experience and deep knowledge of the game as assets beneath the rough exterior. “He has that player’s attitude, which I still don’t have, where he can shake off a bad play or a loss by the next day,” Jack told the Post-Dispatch in 1991. “And I could be in the game 50 years and still not know some of what he does because I didn’t play the game in the big leagues.”

Buck invited Shannon to his house, where they would simulate a postgame show with a tape recorder and a stopwatch. Shannon practiced his enunciation by himself at home every night. He smoothed out his pacing and timing, if not necessarily his diction. He learned to pick his spots with his color-man analysis, not pounding the listeners’ eardrums with boring stats or tutorials. Eventually he started sharing play-by-play duties with Buck (Ground ball to the Wizard and up, over, and O-U-T), but he maintained his sense of spontaneity, entertaining with his stories, observations, and really, whatever popped into his head (What kind of moon is that?). And somewhere along the way, the digressions and malapropisms that had once been Shannon’s bane became an endearing peccadillo and, eventually, a trademark.

Back in the booth, Shannon has moved on to the subject of  bat grain.

“You know the new bats, now, they don’t have grain because of the paint they have on them,” he says, “so they put a hole in the bottom of these bats to see where the grain is.”

Horton smiles and nods. “Interesting,” he says.

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For Shannon, impulsiveness is more than just a broadcast method—it’s the credo by which he lives. “Mike is one of the most consistent inconsistent people I’ve ever known,” says Joe Buck. “He is one of the most street-smart people I’ve ever met. He just has a way of figuring things out… He’s a guy who can find his way to a tee time on any golf course or a corner fishing hole anywhere in the world.”

Shannon lives life like a man who survived a death sentence at age 31. For him, that often means rising with the sun and heading to the horse track to play the ponies. Or he’ll go to the links, where the rules are different depending on who’s playing with him. La Russa: “If you putt once on the green, no matter how close you are, he’ll say, ‘That’s good.’ You never three-putt when you play with Mike.” Horton: “We played with him in Denver. Mike got a 5 on every hole—even the holes when he swung 16 times. He didn’t care. We didn’t care. It was just his competitive nature.” Or McLaughlin: “I was ready to pick up a ball after a bad shot, and he stopped me. ‘Don’t pick that ball up. You might chip it in. Big boy, you never know.’”

After a quick nap, it’s off to the ballpark and the booth that’s become Shannon’s office. “He was the first guy that I ever saw define multitasking,” says Buck. “I’ve seen him opening mail, eating peanuts, phone to his ear, hitting the cough button to talk on the phone, lifting the cough button to do the play-by-play, and hitting the cough button again to talk on the phone… He was handling everything while he was calling the game.”

Postgame in St. Louis usually meant heading to Shannon’s for the radio show, late nights of trading war stories with guests, on and off air. And when he was on the road, it could mean anything. “I spent a summer when I was 17 traveling with my dad and the team,” says daughter Erin Shannon. “No one lives bigger, better, or bolder than my pops. When I got to college the next year, it was a pretty big letdown going to those parties. Nothing compares with traveling with the Moon Man.”

Buck remembers an away series against the Mets in 1990. On a Monday night, he and Todd Zeile, who was then a 24-year-old rookie with the Cards, had passes to an infamous subterranean Manhattan hotspot called the China Club. “Zeile and I found ourselves at a table with Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, all these supermodels. And we were both in our early 20s and it was incredible, and we were, like, ‘Where in the hell are we?’” he says. “It had to have been 1 a.m., and we got up and were walking out, and walking down the steps, into the club, on a Monday, was Mike Shannon.” When Shannon spotted the boys, he took off his green blazer, handed it to Zeile, and said: Hold this, big boy—I’m going out dancing. “The last thing we saw was him wading his way onto a crowded dance floor,” says Joe. “We were leaving, we had had enough, and he was just starting his night.”

“He was the first guy that I ever saw define multitasking,” says Buck. “I’ve seen him opening mail, eating peanuts, phone to his ear, hitting the cough button to talk on the phone, lifting the cough button to do the play-by-play, and hitting the cough button again to talk on the phone… He was handling everything while he was calling the game.”

In the late ’90s, Jack Buck, suffering from Parkinson’s disease and lung cancer, scaled back his schedule to calling only home games, before dying in 2002. That left Shannon as the ranking voice of the St. Louis Cardinals. Then, in 2013, Stan Musial died. It was a personal loss that Shannon still gets choked up talking about. But perhaps the greatest hit was losing Judy, his wife of 48 years, to brain cancer in 2007. “Our mom moving on has had a deep effect on all of us,” says Tim Shannon. “As to my dad’s outlook on life, it’s pretty clear—he lives every day like it’s his last.”

Shannon started gradually reducing his own broadcast schedule a few years ago, and he only worked a third of the road games last year, including the postseason. Last November, he married his longtime girlfriend, Lori Bergman, a travel agent based in Quincy, Illinois. “She had him in Africa last September during the pennant race,” says Herzog. “I was afraid he might fall off an elephant before the damn playoffs, and we’d lose our broadcaster.”

Shannon says he’s looking forward to traveling and spending time with his 18 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren this summer. He’ll watch them play in ballgames, swim in meets, and sing in musicals. He wants to take them hunting and fishing. “This is the first summer I’ll get to enjoy,” says Shannon.

Of course he’ll follow the team as a fan on the radio and TV, he says. Shannon thinks the time away will give him a new appreciation for the job. “That enthusiasm I have for the game,” he says, “it’ll ignite it even more.”

And when asked whether he’ll ever stop broadcasting completely: “I hope not.”

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It’s the bottom of the ninth, and the Cards lead 3–2. Nobody on base, two outs, no balls and two strikes on the Marlins’ batter, with St. Louis’ Miguel Socolovich on the mound.

“Here’s the oh-two pitch,” says Shannon. “Swing and a miss! He struck him out, and the Cardinals beat the Marlins 3–2! We’ll have totals and more for you in a moment.”

Shannon and the crew pull off their headsets. As the crowd files out, an older woman spots Shannon from the seats below the booth and waves. He smiles and returns the gesture. The PA picks up its window-rattling Top 40 playlist, just one of the many diversions required to entertain fans during a baseball game these days.

There was a time when the voice in the booth was all a fan needed. They’d even bring their radios and earpieces to the games. “Mike’s one of the last guys who is a true entertainer,” says McLaughlin. Joe Buck, one of the best-known sportscasters on the planet, agrees: “It’s the last stand for the golden age of broadcasters.”

See also: Quiz: Who Said It, Yogi Berra or Mike Shannon?

There are several possible reasons. First, as Buck intimated earlier, an increasingly PC world won’t allow it. “I don’t think that you’re allowed to say the things my dad and Mike and people who were broadcasting in the 1970s, ’80s, and even early ’90s used to say,” says Buck. Second, the game has changed, veering toward numbers and sabermetrics. “There’s a perception that a younger audience only wants to hear stats and figures,” says Horton. “The tendency for younger broadcasters is to feel that we have to cater to this statistical conversation.” “You’re not going to get WAR and WHIP from Mike,” says Buck.

A third possible factor: Just as free agency has allowed players to move around to the best jobs and money, the on-air talent has followed suit. “Most guys that get the jobs in these cities are not hometown guys,” says McLaughlin, one of the few exceptions. Shannon has been a Cardinal since the day he signed his minor-league deal in 1958. Fifty-eight years with the same organization—these days, that’s an anomaly in any industry.

The other unavoidable fact is that today’s fans, particularly the young, consume baseball differently: on TV, streaming online, gamecasts and updates and tweets beamed directly to their phones. “The last thing this younger generation could imagine is sitting out on a porch and listening to a baseball game on the radio,” says Buck.

Back in the booth, headset on, Shannon signs off: “Hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we’ve enjoyed bringing it to you,” he says. “We say so long from Florida.”

He gathers the two remaining water bottles, his reading glasses, and the Daily Racing Form and puts them all back in the red plastic shopping bag. He says tonight he’ll be going over to Red Schoendienst’s house for dinner.

Sunglasses on, he takes the stairs four flights down to the concourse, where a few fans holler, “Hiya, Mike!” and ask for an autograph or an “ussie.” He obliges without complaint. Eventually he makes his way to the Cardinal clubhouse and pokes his head into manager Mike Matheny’s office.

“Good job, man,” says Shannon, giving the skipper a fist bump.

“Good win, huh?” says Matheny.

“I guarantee it. Heh-heh-heh.”

In the hallway outside the locker room, several young boys wearing Cardinal caps and jerseys wait with their parents to catch a glimpse of some players. Shannon walks up and introduces himself. The boys are hesitant to return the fist bump. Their parents have to tell them who Shannon is.

“You boys chew a lot of bubble gum today?” Shannon asks.

The boys shake their heads. “Sunflower seeds,” one says meekly.

“That’s all they’ve got these days,” says Shannon. “Seeds. Gatorade. And H-two-oh. Heh-heh-heh.”

As the boys spot activity in the locker room, Shannon shakes the adults’ hands and says goodbye. He quietly slips out the back door to the team parking lot and into the waning Florida afternoon.

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Editor's Note: This article has been updated to reflect that Shannon is 76 years old.