IT'S IN THE CARDS

 

              

This is an era of overstatement; if the word “incredible” were removed from the vocabulary TV news and sports casters could barely speak. Even the least-exceptional occurrence is thusly described; as my late friend Seymour Shlaes used to say, “It’s so incredible it’s unbelievable.”

               That’s why it’s good to focus on something exceptional that’s so often been repeated it has become ordinary. I mean the presence of the St. Louis Cardinals in another baseball playoffs season. While most of the attention in the now-concluding pennant races has been elsewhere they are there again, for the 16^th time in this 23-seasons-old century. And while they won’t be favored to reach the World Series the fact they’re in the mix gives them a shot. They’ve made it four times since 2000 and won it twice, in 2006 and 2011.

               Plus, they haven’t been bad in their non-pennant years. Since Y2K they’ve had just one sub-.500 season, a record exceeded only by the almighty New York Yankees.  And while it can be said that the Yankees (and their National League-counterpart L.A. Dodgers) buy their victories with a limitless budget, the small-market Cardinals, with a mid-level payroll, gather them the hard way, through skill, guile and perseverance. There’s a lesson there, for any organization that aspires to do the same.   

               You’re probably waiting for my “to be sure” paragraph, and I won’t disappoint. Point one in this regard is that the Redbirds’ success dates back farther than the year 2000. In the horse-and-rabbit stew that is Major League Baseball (the horse being the Yankees), the Cardinals have been the biggest rabbit, with 11 World Series titles (to the Yanks’ 27) beginning in 1926. Point two is that other small-market clubs, namely the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays, also have outperformed expectations over the last two decades, but their charts are roller coasterish while that of the St. Louisans looks like a placid lake.

               The Cards’ record stands in sharpest contrast with that of the Chicago Cubs, my team and their biggest rival. The Cubs broke their epic, 100-year-plus championship drought only after Theo Epstein showed up in 2011, cleaned the stable of every serviceable veteran, and intentionally sustained three bad seasons while building toward contender status. The drought was broken by a good run and the 2016 crown, but the Cubs never repeated that triumph and Epstein eventually left the team where he found it—near the bottom looking up. Its latest rebuild now numbers two dreary seasons with no certain end in sight.

               Fans love to debate whether good fans make good teams or vice versa (I favor the latter position) but it’s not debatable that St. Louis is as good a baseball town as there is. Except for hockey—a niche sport in the American Midwest—the Cards have the city to themselves, the NFL having fled in 2015 and professional basketball absent since the ABA folded in 1976. With a metro-area population of about 2.8 million people, 21^st on the U.S. table, the team annually ranks at or near the top of the MLB attendance list, regularly averaging more than 40,000 filled seats a game in its 44,000-seat Busch Stadium home. That’s despite local summer weather famous for its sticky heat.

               A larger asset has been the kind of organizational stability that’s rare in the impatient world of big-time sports. The current span started with Bill DeWitt Jr., who bought the team from the Anheuser Busch brewing people in 1996. He’s a baseball guy to the core, his father having owned and run the St. Louis Browns and Cincinnati Reds. His own history in the sport started as a nine-year-old batboy for the Brownies.

Walt Jocketty was the Cards’ general manager when DeWitt bought the team. He was kept on, serving until 2007. He then was replaced by his assistant, John Mozeliak, who in 2017 was replaced by his assistant, Mike Girsch. Similarly, the team’s recent managerial chain includes just Tony LaRussa (1996-2011), Mike Matheny (2012-18), Mike Shildt (2018-21) and, now, Oliver Marmol. Matheny, Shildt and Marmol all had Cardinals’ tenure before becoming managers. Marmol has been with the team since he was a 19-year-old player draftee in 2007.

That’s the “Cardinals’ Way,” the title the team affixes to the 86-page handbook it gives to every new employee. For players it lays out the fitness expectations, practice designs and on-field approaches it applies at every level of its system. For the Cards, the saw “being on the same page” is meant literally.

But if the Cards march mostly in step they can break cadence to plug holes. Their lineups typically are anchored by home-grown players, such as the catcher Yadier Molina and the pitcher Adam Wainwright, but when the need arises they can reach out for help, even if it means breaking the game’s maxims. For example, they ignored the lately popular “never pay anyone over 30” rule to trade for their two current best players—first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and third-baseman Nolan Arenado—after those guys’ original teams decided against paying them at market prices.

 Goldschmidt was picked up in 2019 at age 31 and given a five-year, $130 million contract. He’s repaying the Cards with an MVP-quality season at 34. Arenado, the game’s best third-baseman since Mike Schmidt, was acquired in 2021 at age 30 with six years remaining on an eight-year, $260 million deal. He’s annually been hitting 30-plus home runs and batting in 100-runs-plus as usual in St. Louis.

The Cardinals have been lucky—witness Molina and Wainwright going relatively injury free for extraordinary periods (Molina is in his 19^th season, Wainwright his 17^th). And Albert Pujols, the Hall of Fame-to-be slugger the team jettisoned in 2011 at age 31, is back at 42 and having a swan-song season worth a Hollywood script. In his case them that has deserves to get.