When the 2000 National League Division Series began, the Atlanta Braves were the defending NL pennant winners and back again as a division champ. The San Francisco Giants were the team who had the National League’s best record in 2000. But neither team would make it out of this best-of-five round. It was the New […]
Tony LaRussa’s arrival in St. Louis in 1996 had paid immediate dividends. A proud Cardinal franchise that had been on the outs for several years got to within one game of the World Series. But that progress was not sustained. Over the next three seasons, St. Louis finished under .500 twice and topped out at […]
The 1991 St. Louis Cardinals marked the start of a new era in the history of this great franchise. The 1980s had been boom times under the leadership of Whitey Herzog. The Cardinals won National League pennants in 1987 and 1985, and they won it all in 1982. They had been a contending team as […]
Whitey Herzog arrived in St. Louis in 1981, after a mostly dry decade in a great baseball town. Herzog immediately turned the Cardinals around. He won a World Series in 1982, National League pennants in 1985 and 1987 and solidified his Hall of Fame resume. The 1989 St. Louis Cardinals were Whitey’s last full season […]
The early 1990s St. Louis Cardinals were looking to regain the mojo of the 1980s, when they won three National League pennants and the World Series in 1982. After a decline at the end of the decade, the great Whitey Herzog retired as manager and Joe Torre took over. Torre turned out winning teams in […]
The St. Louis Cardinals are one of baseball’s most consistently successful franchises, but the period immediately following baseball’s realignment in 1969 weren’t standout years. With both leagues split into a just an East & West division and the winners moving straight to the League Championship Series, the Cardinals went twelve years without winning the NL […]
Joe Torre’s illustrious managerial career got its start in Atlanta in the early 1980s. It reached its peak with a glorious run at the helm of the New York Yankees that started in 1996. In between those two is a more forgotten part of Torre’s history, the 4-plus years he spent in St. Louis. Torre […]
The Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals were teams built for their homefield. The Twins had power, well-suited to the hitter-friendly atmosphere at the Metrodome. The Cardinals, playing in what was then an artificial turf-covered Busch Stadium with deep dimensions, were constructed on speed. It’s appropriate that when these contrasting teams met in the 1987 […]
In the 21st century, the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants are arguably baseball’s two pre-eminent franchises. They’ve combined for seven National League pennants and four World Series titles. On three occasions (2002, 2012 & 2014) they’ve gone head-to-head in the postseason. That wasn’t the case when they met in the 1987 NLCS and […]
The 1987 St. Louis Cardinals were a team with some amends to make. They were coming off a horrid run of a year plus ten innings. It went back to the 1985 World Series when, on the verge of a championship in Game 6, a bad umpire’s call triggered a ninth-inning collapse and they melted […]
The 1982 baseball season has some hidden gems in MLB history. The final day of the regular season produced an epic head-to-head battle. Game 5 of the American League Championship Series—then the decisive game, in this era of best-of-five LCS play—produced a similar dramatic ending. A future Hall of Fame manager made his first appearance on the October stage. And none of the teams involved in any of the above ultimately won the World Series. Here’s the rundown…
… it was a Series that was ready for prime-time as the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals gave America a fun regional rivalry, the Show-Me State Showdown, and a seven-game series, replete with controversy, as the Royals ultimately won their first, and thus far, only title.