On Saturday September 8^th of this year, Burton History Trees (1) did a presentation at UCB weekend (2) to members of the United Cardinal Bloggers. (3) I was immediately intrigued by the possibility of having something out there that showed every St. Louis Cardinals player in history on it. They asked for our help in editing the tree and would note our names on the legend. Pretty cool, huh? I, among other bloggers, started looking at the tree and my son Josh found an error that needed to be corrected immediately. There was an overlay issue on the tree that was easy for us to see. He kept looking and found a few more overlay issues as well.

We decided to take a poster copy of the tree home and later I would spend a couple of hours going over the tree and finding errors. I made a list of 30 and send it off to the guys at Burton. I am happy to say that Burton’s Eric Fine said he thought my feedback was perhaps the best he received and they said they addressed all that they were able to. They used at least seven out of the 30 suggestions I gave them. I was not happy with a few of the ones they didn’t use but it is Burton’s tree, not mine. I would like to share what I would have done differently.

I would have pushed to get the Cardinals and MLB permission for this tree and then I would have been able to use logos and things to make the tree look official like the actual Cardinals logos and the MLB stamp of approval. Yeah, the project may have taken longer and I may have lost a bit of creativity but I would have gotten the tree on the Cardinals team store. That being said, I would have also made the flags on the tree fly from left to right. Burton did this on the Chicago Cubs tree and it looked good. They however did not like the look. Real championship banners do not fly right to left. There is still quite of bit of overlay with the banners on the tree. This cuts off some of the players names. Just think if that was your Grandpa’s name where letters were covered. That’s just something I wouldn’t want to do. I am also not a big fan of the filler words. Some are not appropriate for the era where they are and one is misspelled.

With all of this being said, I am proud that I was able to help Burton History Trees. I was honored when they sent me a few copies to keep as my own. Josh and I were both honored when our names on the legend chart shown as part of the partnership with the United Cardinal Bloggers. I also found it pretty cool when Josh and I saw the tree at a local sports collectible store.

This is Burton’s tree, not mine. But I am also proud that Burton has offered anyone that reads this blog a 10% discount on any order that is placed by 12/31/12 by using the code BBL. See the banner.

http://www.burtonhistorytrees.com/st-louis-cardinals

I am proud to hang my St. Louis Cardinals Burton History Tree in my house. I hope you will be also.

UPDATE!!!  Thru 12/31 it has now been changed to 25% off using the Code BBL!!!

My Burton History Tree