The owner stole the team away from town, cold and cold, like Willie Sutton who took a few thousand dollars from the hands of a local bank. He found paradise where he had many before him: Los Angeles – where the sun rises every day, where no one has a shovel, where untold riches await him among beautiful people.

And the city he left behind… has never been forgotten.

He did not forgive.

The anger continued. infuriates. Say the owner’s name anywhere within the city limits, and be prepared to wipe the angry spit off your forehead.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

We’re not talking about Walter O’Malley and Brooklyn (although we can talk about Walter O’Malley and Brooklyn). We’re talking about Stan Kroenke and St. Louis. And if you thought it’s impossible to believe that the polite, polite Gateway Arch keepers can’t channel Sonny Corleone’s inner character the way old-school Brooklynites can, well…

“The three biggest sports in St. Louis are the cardinals hating the blues and the Kroenke,” says Bernie Miklach, who has been the leading voice on all things St. Louis since arriving at the Post-Dispatch in 1985 and now hosts a daily talk show on KNWS Radio and writes Column at scoopswithdannymac.com.

“It’s borderline obsessive with a lot of people here, sometimes beyond obsession. The oath of allegiance is almost kind of weird. Here if you don’t hate rams, you don’t like St. Louis.”

Now, on the one hand, you can understand betrayal. After all, Kroenke was one of them—from Mora, Missouri, a University of Missouri graduate—and one of the main reasons the Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995 after he bought 30 percent of a team. The Rams became an instant miner in St. Louis, creating a dynamic team. They won Super Bowl XXXIV in January 2000. Their new home, born in the Trans World Dome, was an instantaneous teller machine and led to the stadium being built around the league.

It became easy, in St. Louis anyway, to forget that the Rams started their existence in Cleveland, moving to Los Angeles in 1946 to escape the Browns (after winning the 1945 NFL Championship, no less, becoming the first defender—nor Still the only one – the hero for saving her city), he moved to Anaheim in 1980, and then moved again to St. Louis.

But St. Louis fully embraced the Rams, filling the void left when the Cardinals moved to Phoenix eight years ago. It may be a baseball city, but the rams are becoming tangled up in the civic fabric. So when Kroenke and the NFL engineered a move to the West in 2016 — which ended up costing Kroenke $790 million to settle a lawsuit with the city — the treachery was deep. And it remains so.

“You can’t talk about football now without always going back to the Rams,” Miklash says. “And look, make no mistake, Stan Kreunke is a bad guy. What he did, duplicity, was terrible, and he paid a heavy price for it. But now if the fans here see Isaac Bruce or Tori Holt on the field in Los Angeles – and they deserve to do it, it’s their privilege!” – They go crazy.”

He laughs.

“I try to say to people, ‘If you let Stan Kroenke live rent-free in your mind in this way, he would win. “Of course when you say that here, people start questioning your loyalty. It’s nuts.”

Miklasz understands, too. Born in Baltimore, his family was one of the original season ticket holders for the Ponies. It still hurts his soul when he finds out that they are playing their games in Indiana now. But he moved.

Some don’t, of course. Until the day both men died, two former legendary writers, Jack Neufeld and Pete Hamill, told the story of a night in a salon when someone told them to write on cocktail napkins the three worst people ever born. The two men, sons of Brooklyn, wrote the same three names in the same order: 1. Hitler; 2. Stalin. 3. O’Malley.

Some grudges take longer to dissolve than others. There was plenty of laughter on social media on Sunday from St. Louis fans who were delighted all 49ers fans invaded SoFi Stadium for the NFC Championship game. Of course, by the end of the match, most of their mood had soured. A bit like how Brooklyn Dodgers fans felt in 1959. 1963. 1965. And for those who stayed in 2020.

“You have to go around it here,” Miklash says. “The poison is real.”