It was the parade.
As the first vehicles emerged from 18th and Market into a roaring human conduit delirious with victory, the Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues engaged in the greatest mutiny in the history of sports, disregarding the confines of trucks and barricades to hand their victory — victory at last! — back to the fans.
I don’t know which embrace it was, which high five, which selfie with O’Reilly! Vladi! Petro! Binner!, which touch of the Cup, which Bud Light (and there were many) but at some point, you knew. It might have been the only drop of rain to fall from the heavens on that perfect day.
It would never, ever be like this again. The Blues could win the Cup every year for the next 10 years. There could be a hundred parades on Market. But it would never be like this. It would never be the same.
This was Bobby’s parade.
It’s funny what we take for granted in life. The very nature of a parade keeps its transience front and center. A parade, as the saying goes, passes by. Every single Blues fan felt the lifespan of the moment. You could see it, stretching down Market to a towering, 630-foot-high finish line.
But Bobby was different. It felt like Bobby would be with us forever because, so far, he had. There had never been a St. Louis Blues without Bobby Plager. The Blues identity had become so intertwined with Bobby that you could not parse the differences between the two any more than you could dip your hand in the ocean and sift the salt from the water.
Bobby was the Blues. He was the best of the Blues. He represented the Note so perfectly that sometimes it was hard to decipher if Bobby represented the Blue Note or if the Blue Note represented what Bobby stood for. His grit. His passion. His loyalty. His love for the game.
I don’t want to seem dramatic, but this is simply a statement of fact: it will never be the same.
Bobby was our living history. He was there from day one. In him you saw the original Blues. You saw the Old Barn and Al Arbour and Glenn Hall and Noel Picard and Jimmy Roberts. You saw the Monday Night Miracle. You heard the voice of Dan Kelly. You witnessed the spectacle that was the Golden Brett. You felt the heartbreak of years. Of decades.
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All of Blues history was concentrated into the person of Bobby Plager. You could feel it. Because of it, you wanted to be close to him. You knew, instinctively, that it would take a hundred conversations with a hundred different people to experience what Bobby personified. And maybe even that wouldn’t be enough.
Bobby was the heart of the team, but he was also the thread that connected the first days of the franchise to today. Woven throughout the memories of parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, generations that would otherwise share very few experiences, was Bobby Plager. All Blues fans felt like they had Bobby Plager in common. I’m pretty sure at one point or another, he met most of them, a logistics-defying feat. And when you met Bobby, he treated you like an old friend.
That’s the thing: Bobby brought you in. Here you stood with the heartbeat of the Blues, the gatekeeper of the franchise, and he made you feel like you were part of the club.
Of all Bobby’s titles—player, coach, a litany of front office positions—perhaps the most definitive was “fan,” though referring to Bobby as a “fan” of the team is akin to referring to Mozart as a “fan” of music. And yet, Bobby loved the team more than anyone else did or could. No matter how big of a fan you were, Bobby loved the team more than you did. And everyone knew it. Everyone felt it.
I think that is one reason the suddenness hit so hard. Often, there is a process of fading. A former player fades from the public eye. He fades into retirement. Sometimes he fades physically. But not Bobby. He was there every day, with the players, with the coaches, with the management, with the media, with the fans. He was until his very last day a bright flame in the Blues organization. And suddenly, without warning, he was gone.
I can still see Bobby in the back of the press box, pacing, famously, during Blues games. I’d walk by him and ask, “How are you doing, Mr. Plager?” And if the Blues were down, he’d respond with a shake of his head, “Oh, I could be better.” And then he’d gesture towards the scoreboard.
The Blues — the franchise, the family, the fans — have suffered a great loss. It is disorienting to imagine the St. Louis Blues without Bobby Plager. I don’t know if I can. And we will tell future generations of Blues fans about Bobby, but how — how can we possibly capture who Bobby was and what he meant to the team, to us, to everyone?
I think Bobby would want us to celebrate more than grieve, and I certainly know that no matter which we happen to be doing at the time, he’d want us to raise a beer or three in his honor. And aren’t you glad that when we do, we can say with the smile of those who were there, “Bobby got his parade”?
The Blues will move forward, and so will we. There will be more victories and more heartbreaks. There will be more moments of euphoria and more Bud Light. There will be more parades. But it will never be quite like it was when Bobby was around. We know because we were there.
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