About St. Louis Cardinals
The franchise has its roots in St. Louis where in 1882 they joined the American Association under the name of St. Louis Brown Stockings, that changed a year later to just Browns for several seasons when in 1899 the team was renamed to St. Louis Perfectos for one season until the name was finally set to St. Louis Cardinals.
The franchise is one of the most successful among the MLB teams. It wasn’t the case from the start though, after securing four consecutive Pennants in AA between the 1885-88 team struggles began.
It took the Cardinals over 20 years since joining the MLB to finally clinched their first NL Pennant which occurred in 1926 and resulted in the team’s first World Series title that the Cardinals took away in a seven game series from the Yankees.
Since then, the Cardinals didn’t win NL Pennant only in the fifties, seventies and the nineties making it up in other decades with multiple appearances in World Series.
To date the franchise has won 11 World Series titles (second to the Yankees with 27) most among the NL franchises. The have secured 19 NL Pennants (second to the Giants with 20). To their list of accomplishments they can add 13 divisional titles coming from two divisions they were members of.
Currently the Cardinals are members of Central Division and with 10 titles they lead the group of the teams here.
Their colours are cardinal red, navy blue, yellow and white and the franchise official mascot is cardinal bird mascot named Fredbird.
While successful as a team the franchise has also fielded many individual successes, some of them that changed the way the game was played or viewed.
Rodger Hornsby’s two time Triple Crowns in batting are worth noticing, also Dizzy Dean’s person can’t be missed for his 30-win season in 1934. These two players had plenty of other achievements but probably the most decorated player is Stan Musial who set 17 MLB and 29 NL records.
Most recently you can add Albert Pujols to the group of impactful players as he was named the league’s MVP three times between the 2005-2008 which equals Musial’s three awards among 20 MVP awards won by the Cardinals players.
It almost seems as the team has a recipe for success. You can add eight 100 wins seasons to only three 100 loss seasons (last one in 1908) and it is easy to realise how great it must have been to be the Cardinals fan.
With the 2015 season being yet another 100 win season the fans can only expect their team to try to get another one along playoffs entry in 2016 season.
