I had three bizarre occurrences connected to my favorite
baseball team occur over the past couple of days. First, I got a call from a St Louis area
code. It was a Cardinal representative
trying to sell me Cardinals tickets. I
have never had that happen to me ever.
Second, I saw a clip of the San Diego Padres TV announcing team before
their opening game of a four game set in St Louis. They were commenting on the fact of how odd
it was that the stadium was so empty with the Cardinals at this time of
year. Finally, I saw a story that
Cardinal tickets were going for incredibly low prices on StubHub. I looked and this was indeed true. You could get a bleacher seat for one
dollar. You can even get field boxes for
less than ten dollars. What in the name
of Stan Musial is going on here?
I have been a Cardinal Fan since 1974. That’s fifty years since my Uncle Donnie took
my cousin Tony and me to our first game.
I’ve been a big fan ever since.
The Cardinals didn’t make the playoffs until 1982 when they won the World
Series. They went to a couple more in
1985 and 1987 then didn’t get back until 1996 (when they hired Tony Larussa). After a couple of more lean years, they made
it back in 2000. They then made the
playoffs 11 of the next 15 years. They made the World Series four times winning
two. After that aside from beating the
Braves in the NLDS in 2019, they’ve had little playoff success. It appears fans have finally grown tired of
coming to games. What happened?
There are a couple of things in my mind. One is that lack of success. Cardinal fans feel that management isn’t
working hard enough to put a winning product on the field. The Cardinals made a couple of great trades
bringing Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado to the team. They’ve
made many more bad moves. One was trading
two pitchers (Sandy Alcantra and Zach Gullen) for Marcel Ozuna. Then they let him leave after two years and
he promptly revitalized his career in Atlanta. They traded Randy Arozarena who
became a very good player. They let go a
very good manager in Mike Shildt because of “differences with management”. He’d done a good job with the San Diego
Padres this year. The Cardinals don’t seem to do a very good job at developing players,
especially pitchers. Once they leave St
Louis, they suddenly improve dramatically.
The second is the atmosphere around the ballpark. There used to be several good places we’d eat
before the game. They are closed
now. The parking around the ballpark is
atrocious. Many people don’t feel safe
walking more than a block or so away from the ballpark after a night game. There used to be a nice shuttle bus system from
Bellville Illinois to the game called the Redbird Express. It’s gone now. You can take the Metro but it’s usually very
packed after the game.
What should be done?
The Cardinal ownership has to look at every facet of the team from the
general managers to all coaches, players, scouts and minor league system. It may very well require a complete overhaul
and ultimately something Cardinal fans would wince at – a “rebuild”. What will actually happen? I don’t know.
I’ll be interested in what is said at the 2025 Cardinal Winter Warmup in
response to fan questions.
