St. Louis Cardinals 2024 Tickets

Popularly referred as "the Cards" or "the Redbirds", The St. Louis Cardinals are a professional baseball team based in St. Louis, Missouri. They are members of the Central Division in the National League of Major League Baseball and are the reigning World Series Champions. The Cardinals have won 10 World Series, the most of any National League team, and second only to the New York Yankees in Major League Baseball, who have 26. The Cardinals have a strong rivalry with the Chicago Cubs that began in 1885.

The team was formed as part of the American Association in 1882 where they enjoyed great success under flamboyant owner Chris von der Ahe. Initially they were known as the "Brown Stockings", named for a previous professional team in the city, whose name was one of several "Stockings" teams inspired by the success of the Cincinnati Red Stockings. This new team's nickname was quickly shortened to "Browns". The Browns won four American Association pennants in a row, 1885-88, and played in an early version of the World Series four times, twice against the National League's Chicago White Stockings. The Series of 1885 ended in dispute and with no resolution. St. Louis won the 1886 Series outright, the only Series of that era that was won by the AA against the NL. The vigorous St. Louis-Chicago rivalry continues to this day.

The Cardinals front office continued to improve their minority hiring record, and built the Cardinals into another of their periodic dynasties. In 1963, they made a late-season run against the Dodgers which came close to putting Stan Musial into a World Series in his announced final season. The Dodgers held them off on that occasion, but for the last six years before divisional play went into effect in 1969 and changed the nature of the pennant races, there were only two colors on National League pennants: Dodger Blue and Cardinal Red.

In the early 1940s, the Cardinals dominated the National League. The 1942 "St. Louis Swifties" won 106 games, the most in franchise history, and are widely regarded as among the greatest baseball teams of all time, beating the Yankees in five games. Outfielder Stan Musial played his first full season with the 1942 Cardinals. Known to loyal fans as "The Man", Musial spent 22 years in a Cardinals uniform, 1941-1944, 1946-1963. He won seven batting titles and three MVP awards, and his 3,630 hits remain the 4th highest in baseball history. In August 1968, a statue of Musial was dedicated outside Busch Memorial Stadium. In 1943 and again in 1944 they posted the second-best records in team history at 105-49. The Yankees got revenge in the 1943 World Series, beating the Cardinals in five games. The 1944 World Series was particularly memorable as they met their cross town rivals, the St. Louis Browns, in the "Streetcar Series". The Cardinals won four games to two. All six games were played in Sportsman's Park, which the two teams shared. Billy Southworth, the manager for all three of those seasons, remains the only Cardinal Manager to guide his team to three straight pennants.

1964 saw one of the wildest pennant races in baseball history. The Philadelphia Phillies seemed to have a commanding lead from 6 1/2 games ahead with only 12 games to play, but fell apart in the last two weeks of the season, as the Cardinals and other teams pounced on the opportunity. The Cardinals, thanks in part to the mid-season acquisition of Lou Brock from the Cubs, swept a 3-game series from Philadelphia to take over first, then clinched on the last day of the season, finishing a game ahead of the Phillies and the Cincinnati Reds, with the San Francisco Giants and the Milwaukee Braves close behind.After August Busch, Jr. died in 1989, the Cardinals finished in the last place in 1990 with Whitey Herzog resigning. He was replaced by Schoendienst and eventually Joe Torre. During Torre's tenure in St. Louis, the Cardinals' highest finish was 87 wins and attained the 3rd place in 1993.

In 1995, Anheuser-Busch, Inc. sold the Cardinals team and Busch Stadium to a new ownership group headed by Southwest Bank's Drew Baur, Fred Hanser and William DeWitt, Jr., for a price substantially undervalued in order to keep the team in St. Louis. Additionally, Civic Center Redevelopment, earlier acquired by A-B, sold the parking garages and other surrounding property owned by this quasi-civic organization to the new ownership group which they sold next to the stadium to an investment group. With the proceeds of sale from the garages, the cost basis in the team was in the $100 million range, a real steal considering that Forbes Magazine values the Cardinals franchise on the high side of $300 million.In 2000, the Cardinals went 95-67, posting their best record since the '87 team that lost the World Series to the Twins. However, the Cardinals, their starting rotation in disarray after the injury to Garrett Stephenson and the meltdown of Rick Ankiel, lost to the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series.

The Cardinals began the 2007 season defending their 2006 World Series championship. On August 6, the Cardinals tied a Major League record with ten consecutive hits without an out in the bottom of the 5th inning against the San Diego Padres. This is the third time the Cardinals have had 10 consecutive hits, also doing it on September 17, 1920 versus the Boston Braves in the 4th inning, and a second time on June 12, 1922 against the Philadelphia Phillies, 6th inning.On April 29, 2007, relief pitcher Josh Hancock was killed in a motor vehicle accident due to a combination of alcohol intoxication, high speed, talking on his cell phone, and later was found to have trace amounts of the pain killer Oxycodone. He hit a tow truck that was parked in the road. The Cardinals' scheduled game with the Chicago Cubs later that day was postponed due to his death. Hancock was the second Cardinals' pitcher to die in the past five years during a Cubs series, following Darryl Kile's death in a Chicago hotel room on June 22, 2002. The death of Josh Hancock set the tone for a season marred by numerous injuries to the starting lineup, with a total of 15 players having spent time on the disabled list.

The Cardinals were founded in the American Association in 1882 as the St. Louis Brown Stockings, taking the name from an earlier National League team. They joined the National League in 1892 and have been known as the Cardinals since 1900. The Cardinals began play in the current Busch Stadium in 2006, becoming the first team since 1923 to win the World Series in their first season in a new ballpark.