“I guess I jinxed them,” Prather later told an Associated Press reporter.
“Initially, it was exposure, trying to get on TV,” he said in a 1991 interview. “Now it’s more trying to be clever and trying to support the team.”
Former Post-Dispatch columnist Jeff Gordon wrote in 1996 about how Prather drove from Springfield at 2:30 a.m. to Memphis to catch a flight to Atlanta for Game 6 of the National League Championship Series.
“I have a bad chest cold,” Prather told Gordon. “I don’t have a voice. I’m beat up worse than Gary Gaetti.”
Nonetheless, Prather made it to taunt Braves fans with signs like “The Tomahawk Choke” and “Jane and Ted’s Excellent Adventure Ends Vs. St. Louis.”
He was escorted out of the stadium in the sixth inning, “presumably for annoying the home crowd,” Gordon wrote.
A longtime Cardinals season ticket-holder, Prather has been featured numerous times over the years in the Post-Dispatch and many other platforms. His basement, a shrine to the Cardinals, was profiled on a recent “Cardinals Insider” video.
“It was the best version of the Smithsonian for Cardinal baseball,” Hinson said. “You could spend hours down there, but there was a story to everything.”
Prather was also a Missouri State athletics superfan, not just of marquee sports but of all the Bears’ teams.