Why David Eckstein Deserves a Bobblehead Doll
By Chris King
July 7, 2026
I was puzzled when I saw a billboard on Interstate 170 in St. Louis County advertising a David Eckstein bobblehead doll night at Busch Stadium on July 11. Eckstein has not worn a Cardinals uniform since 2007 and has not played a game of Major League Baseball since 2010. When I investigated the matter, I realized that we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the Cardinals’ World Series victory in 2006 when Eckstein was awarded the series’ Most Valuable Player. This reminded me how excited I was when the Cardinals acquired the scrappy shortstop in December 2004, based on an experience I had watching and listening to him a few seasons before when he was playing with the Anaheim (not yet Los Angeles) Angels.
In 2002, I was the travel editor for Car & Travel magazine in New York with 1.1 million AAA member readers. This was in the halcyon days of travel editorial before the market downturn of 2007–8 derailed that gravy train, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, which nearly demolished it. Back then, travel writers were gladhanding their way across the globe, having the times of their lives on the dimes of tourism vendors. As travel editor, it was my job to assign and edit, rather than to travel and write, but it was expected that I would give myself some plum assignments so long as I did not overdo it.
I assigned myself to be the magazine’s professional sports travel beat writer. I traveled to observe home games for iconic sports franchises such as the Buffalo Bills (their tailgate party is everything they say it is) and the Montreal Canadiens (seats right up against the glass, baby). I reported baseball Spring Training stories in Florida and Arizona. I also assigned myself as the beat writer for food and beverage travel, and therefore, doubling up on two of my self-imposed beats, I assigned myself a travel story about beer and baseball in Southern California.
I planned a trip when I could catch home games in San Diego, Anaheim, and Los Angeles—a stretch of late April 2002 afforded that tricky opportunity. Before and after the ball games, I visited the nearest local microbreweries to sample the wares. Memory does not serve as to which beer attraction I visited in Los Angeles, a city I love for so many other reasons they have crowded out the beer. In San Diego, I visited Stone Brewing, brewer of the great Arrogant Bastard, then just blowing up into craft beer superstardom. (I can stake a small claim to American beer history in that Stone founder Greg Koch visited me in New York after my swing through San Diego, slept on my couch, and I took him to Brooklyn Brewing, where he signed the first distribution deal for Stone Beer outside of the Southwest.)
In Anaheim, there was at that time a location of a regional beermaker, Gordon Biersch Brewery, very near the stadium. I had no profound interest in the Anaheim Angels nor the team they were hosting that night, the Toronto Blue Jays. So, as the game went into extra innings with the two teams tied at 4, then stayed that way for four long innings, I joined the fair-weather fans abandoning their hometown Angels on this Sunday evening in the season’s first month and went to sample some approximately local beers.
I sat at the bar and watched the game since, after all, I was covering this sporting event and had to remain on the lookout for material. I was as surprised as anyone when the Blue Jays scored in the top of the 14th, and then the hometown Angels loaded the bases in the bottom of the fifth extra inning. David Eckstein strode to the plate—at 5’7″ and 165 pounds, he was the smallest player in the Major Leagues, a contact hitter who was hitless for the night. Yet he lifted a fastball barely over the left field wall and won the game for the Angels, 8-5, with a walk-off grand slam. The ebullient but befuddled announcer pointed out that this was the second game in a row in which the pint-sized shortstop had hit a grand slam.
I was paying my tab as the hometown hero was circling the bases. As I drove to my hotel, I found post-game coverage on local radio. The heroic slugger of the night—a role player just starting his second season in the big leagues, known, if at all, for his hustle and baseball fundamentals, not his bat—was being interviewed by a reporter. The reporter had that hometown-winning-locker-room hype-man voice, speaking at the top of his lungs to the point of rasping as he said things like, “David Eckstein! Walk-off grand slam! Tell me how it must feel to win the game for your team in this way?!”
Eckstein’s voice remained calm and measured as he said something like, “I feel like I made a mistake at the plate and I need to work on my swing. All I needed to win the game was to get the ball out of the infield and into a gap. That’s what I was trying to do. When I hit the ball in the air, I pop out. I got lucky tonight, and I can’t stay in this league on luck.”
The rah-rah reporter was not having any of that. He came back with something like: “Oh, come on! David Eckstein! Walk-off grand slam! Second game in a row with a grand slam!
How must that feel to win the game for your team with that walk-off grand slam?!”
Eckstein did not budge but rather countered with something like, “I will be the first person in the ballpark tomorrow, the first guy in the batting cages, the first guy asking for someone to throw me some batting practice, working on my swing. I’m a contact hitter. I’m a spray hitter. I’m a line drive hitter. I put the ball in play. If I keep hitting the ball in the air, I don’t stay in the Major Leagues.” He would go on to help the Angels win the World Series that year.
I moved back to St. Louis from New York two baseball seasons later to edit The St. Louis American. The paper already had a seasoned and stylish baseball columnist in Alvin A. Reid, but when the Cardinals acquired David Eckstein in December 2004, I had to tell this story. I came up with a name for my baseball column, “Ball Three,” which I still like—after the third ball, you know you need to throw a strike, the way you need to throw a strike every time you put pen to paper in a baseball column.
I ended up filing exactly one “Ball Three” column, my David Eckstein story. That column apparently never made its way onto the internet, so I repeat the story here. I remember concluding my column by telling Cardinals fans how much they were going to love this David Eckstein guy—and, in the 2006 World Series, he proved me a prophet. I am not a collector of sports memorabilia, but I did collect a box of David Eckstein cereal, EcksO’s, and I have a feeling that, on July 12, I will possess a David Eckstein bobblehead doll as well. Play ball!
