Today baseball marks the 64th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Two years before that, Jackie was breaking into professional baseball as the shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. He was only a Monarch for five months before Branch Rickey offered him a contract, and the Monarchs spent most of their schedule on the road, so Kansas City fans only had around 12 dates to see Jackie patrolling the infield of Ruppert (later Municipal) Stadium at 22nd & Brooklyn. Here are details from some of those home games:

May 6 • vs Chicago American Giants

After playing a month of exhibition games in the south, the Monarchs opened the regular season at home on a Sunday. Pre-game festivities started at 2:00, and “began with a parade led by the Wayne Minor American Legion drum corps and Arthur E. Toney, president of the Monarchs Boosters’ club. A detail of the Kansas State Guard…drilled. Dr. J.B. Martin, league president, was introduced from the pitcher’s mound. James H. Herbert, attorney, pitched the first ball to Eddie Dwight, a member of the Monarchs when ‘Bullet’ Rogan was manager” (May 11 Kansas City Call). Jackie had been so impressive during the spring exhibitions that manager Frank Duncan had him hitting third in his first league game. Jackie came through with an RBI double in the sixth inning, a stolen base and run scored to help the Monarchs to a 6-2 win. Booker McDaniels pitched a complete game for KC.

May 13 • vs Birmingham Black Barons

A week later, the Black Barons came to KC for a double header. Legendary Monarchs pitcher Hilton Smith dominated game one with a complete game, 3 runs allowed performance on the bump and a 2-for-3, three RBI day at the plate. Jackie went 1-for-3 with two RBI and was rung up for an error. The Monarchs won game two as well.

Satchel & Jackie

June 10 • vs Cincinnati-Indianapolis Clowns

After four long weeks on the road, the Monarchs finally returned to KC to meet the Clowns for another Sunday double header. Some guy named Satchel Paige started the first game for the Monarchs, and struck out six while allowing one hit and no runs in his four innings of work. Jackie had a nice 2-for-3 with a triple, two RBI and two runs, and KC prevailed 7-1. They dropped the nightcap for their first home loss of the season.

July 1 • vs Cleveland Buckeyes

The Buckeyes had everyone’s number in 1945. They won both halves of the American League season and then upset the National League Homestead Grays in the World Series. The Monarchs lost all five contests with them that I am aware of in ’45. That includes two losses in KC on July 1. The Monarchs blew late leads in both games. Jackie had one single in four at-bats plus a run scored in the first game. Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe started at catcher in one of his few games as a Monarch, but was knocked out by a foul tip off the bat of Sam Jethroe (future NL Rookie of the Year).

July 4 • vs Cleveland Buckeyes

The teams met for another twin bill in KC three days later, and the Buckeyes came out on top in both games once again. The Monarchs hot-hitting first baseman Lee Moody injured his shoulder in batting practice, which lead to some shuffling of infielders. Jackie took over first base. The out-of-place fielders piled up errors in the two losing efforts.

July 8 • vs Birmingham Black Barons

A crowd of just 1,900 braved some nasty weather to watch this game which was played on nearly ankle-deep mud. Those hearty fans witnessed Jackie smack three hits in five at-bats, with two doubles, two runs and three RBI. Behind another strong pitching performance from Booker McDaniels, KC walked away 9-2 winners.

August 5 • vs Ft. Leavenworth Sherman Field Flyers

This was an exhibition game against white Navy men from nearby Leavenworth, Kansas. The pitcher for the Flyers was Herman Besse, who split time between the Navy, the minors and majors between 1936-54. Satchel Paige and Booker McDaniels combined for 10 strikeouts against the Navy men, who had won the semi-pro championship in 1944, and the Monarchs prevailed 6-0. Jackie made the most of his 1-for-5 day at the plate with an RBI, stolen base and run scored. This was Jackie’s last game in KC. By the time the Monarchs returned to play on September 2nd, Jackie was no longer with the team, and was under contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Aaron Stilley bloggerates here and Twittercizes here. In-depth coverage of the 1945 Monarchs season can be found here.

Integration of the white major leagues was a triumph for America, but it sent black baseball teams spinning into a new direction in the late 1940s.

To say integration killed Negro League baseball would be not quite accurate but the signing of Jackie Robinson did come just as the new “league” was still an infant.

A Negro “league” had not really held teams in unity for several years, coming together after The Depression. Barnstorming, players jumping contracts and player raids by owners, made black baseball unorganized throughout most of the 1930s. The Negro National League of the west and the Eastern Colored League had been so fragmented throughout the 1930s that league championships held little meaning. No World Series was held from 1927 to 1942.

All that was changing, however, and in the late 1930s and early 1940s, things were taking shape once again. The Kansas City Monarchs were back on top, winning the 1942 World Series, and they signed Robinson in 1945, only to have him “raided” by the Brooklyn Dodgers Branch Rickey.

What is now heralded as an admirable stand for justice may not have been completely magnanimous on Rickey’s part. Some believe, rather than intending to integrate white baseball, Rickey was actually attempting to use Robinson to form a new Negro league to compete with the existing leagues. Regardless of his motive, Rickey paid the Monarchs, the team with which Robinson was under contract, absolutely nothing.

Player raiding had plagued the Negro Leagues for years. But the practice had lost favor by the 1940s, and J.L. Wilkinson, the white owner of the Monarchs, felt disrespected and violated by the Dodgers’ nabbing of Robinson. He and partner Tom Baird protested to everyone who would listen, but decided against lodging a formal complaint to Major League Happy Chandler.

To attempt to block Robinson’s departure could have slowed the integration that was finally at hand. So the Monarchs were forced to relent. But the handwriting was on the wall, and from that moment everything changed for black teams.

Suddenly fans weren’t as interested in the aging legends of black baseball. They came, black and white alike, to see the future stars who would inevitably be added to white teams. Monte Irvin, Larry Doby, Don Newcombe – it was now the young studs that all eyes were upon.

But worse than that for black teams, was that attendance immediately took a hit. Black fans took new interest in the major leagues. Attendance in the Negro American League (based mostly in the Midwest) dropped by about half in 1947 from what it had been a few years earlier. Teams tried cutting payroll to stay afloat. The affect of salary reduction made the game even more suited for youngsters. Older players who were used to higher salaries and doubted their chances of making the major leagues jumped to Mexico or the Caribbean. Youths hoping to follow in Robinson’s footsteps were concerned more with opportunity than with salary. They were more likely to stick it out than their older counterparts.

It wasn’t long before the Negro Leagues transformed from the pinnacle of black baseball to a training ground for eager young prospects. Teams trying to stay in the black seized this new opportunity. If they couldn’t keep the big leagues out, they could at least get a piece of the action. After the Cleveland Indians’ Bill Veeck actually recompensed the Newark Eagles for Doby’s services, a new business boomed.

Since the Kansas City Monarchs were still an elite team, they had some of the best players for the white teams to pick from. In 1947, the year Robinson debuted in Brooklyn, the Monarchs sent Willard Brown and Hank Thompson to the St. Louis Browns. Next, they sent Satchel Paige to Bill Veeck’s Indians in 1948. At that point, black baseball teams began, by necessity, to care more about developing young big leaguers than about winning games. The 1949 the Monarchs actually voluntarily dropped out of the playoffs because they’d sold off four key players.

After 1949 there would be no more player raids without payment, a la Jackie Robinson. A minimum payment of $5,000 was set when Irvin signed with the New York Giants. The Monarchs scored the biggest profit in the Negro American League when they sold Ernie Banks and Bill Dickey for $20,000 in 1953.

All in all, the Monarchs sold 25 players to the major leagues, gaining the reputation of a Negro baseball preparatory school. Some teams actually formed alliances with major league teams, as the Monarchs allied themselves with the New York Yankees. The Monarchs would ship four players to the Yankees in 1949 and 1950, including future MVP Elston Howard.

Integration changed not only the segregated white leagues but also the Negro Leagues. The need for an all-Negro league disappeared after integration, but the exhibition of major league prospects kept black baseball going for nearly a decade after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

During the offseason we have been taking a look at the past, giving readers a timeline of St. Louis baseball throughout history. Last time we learned about Gussie Busch’s takeover of a team that was hitting a long stretch of down seasons. He was determined to bring winning back to St. Louis, but did he have the firepower?

Gussie Busch

Gussie Busch had a mind of his own, and he rarely enlisted the help of more than one person at a time. When he realized that he was investing a truckload of money into this team and not seeing much in the standings, he decided to put someone else in charge of the team in the general manager position. The only person on his staff at Anheuser-Busch that actually had any baseball experience was Dick Meyer. Meyer’s experience with baseball only extended to playing first base for Concordia Seminary in St. Louis while he was a student there.

He took the job, but was not a fan of being in the public eye, so he passed the job off as soon as possible. Meyer wanted Bing Devine to take the job. Devine had been running the Cardinals Triple A team in Rochester for six years and had been doing good things there. He wanted Bing to come in and do what he had been doing there in St. Louis. What Meyer did not know was that Gussie had gone out and talked to a friend of his in Chicago who told him that Frank Lane, the general manager of the White Sox, was on his way out of town, and if Gussie was smart he would pick him up.

Meyer was in a bind. He had hired Devine to come in and take over as GM, but Gussie went behind him to get Lane. Luckily for the Cardinals Bing was a patient man, and hung around with the team. Frank Lane was in charge, and he was making his “Trader Lane” moniker very apparent. Whereas Branch Rickey always wanted to trade a player a year too early than a year too late, Lane just wanted to make trades anytime, anywhere, and with anyone.

In Lane, the Cardinals had a GM that was willing to sell the farm for a group of wily vets or sell his stars for a bunch of kids, depending on his mood. At one point he had a trade in his mind for getting rid of Stan Musial, but thankfully Gussie Busch would have none of it. While the Cardinals were horrible in 1955, winding up in seventh, they still had some good players, one of which was named Bill Virdon. Virdon had a fantastic rookie season for a lackluster team, so good that he won the Rookie of the Year award. For whatever reason, Lane turned around and traded him 24 games into the 1956 season, claiming that his eyesight was going bad and Virdon would wash out of baseball quickly. Eleven seasons later Virdon retired with a career .267/.316/.379 line. Washing out of baseball indeed…

Ken Boyer

The other key rookie to the 1955 season was Ken Boyer. Boyer stepped into the lineup as the everyday third baseman, a position he would hold down for eleven years with St. Louis. Going into 1956 Boyer was poised to have a breakout season, and breakout he did – quickly becoming one of the team leaders along with stalwart Stan Musial and the solid Wally Moon. Together, along with the arms of Vinegar Bend Mizell, Murry Dickson and Herm Wehmeier helped the Cardinals climb out of the National League basement, finishing around .500 and back up to fourth place.

“Trader Lane” kept up his busy ways in 1957, but Gussie Busch was growing tired of being left out of the loop. He wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes, and felt that, as owner (not to mention the guy who writes the checks) he had a right to be told who was being traded away/for before it happened. When Lane continued to try to fly under the radar of the boisterous owner, Gussie grew more and more frustrated.

Finally Lane put together a trade that broke everything into the open. He made plans with the Philadelphia Phillies to trade Boyer and Harvey Haddix for Phillies icon Richie Ashburn and another player. Busch flipped his lid and absolutely refused to let Lane make the trade. When Lane realized he was being handcuffed, he just up and quit, walking away and right into the GM job for the Cleveland Indians. Bing Devine, hidden away in the Cardinals’ front office for almost three full years, was ready and waiting to step in. His first act? Cancel out that Boyer trade before it went public!

Having succeeded there, he looked to see how the Cardinals could continue to improve on the 87-67 finish they had in 1957. At this point there were several solid players on the club beyond Musial (who kept on in his incredible career and finished second in the 1957 MVP race) and Boyer. Wally Moon and Joe Cunningham both had solid years, at the plate, Larry Jackson, Lindy McDaniel and Sam Jones were holding up the rotation, and the Cardinals were starting to look like they were contenders again.

In December of 1957, Devine made his first big trade, swapping pitchers Willard Schmidt, Ted Wieand and Marty Kutyna to the Cincinnati Reds for outfielders Curt Flood and Joe Taylor. If you have never heard of any of those players besides Flood, you are not alone, as none of the other four would really ever make a name for themselves. Flood would not really break out as a solid player until 1961, but keep his name in mind, as it will become important.

The team at the time was a very close-knit bunch. Players ate together after the game, there were really no loaners, and in a city like St. Louis which was still very segregated everyone on the team made sure that the black players were accepted and welcomed. No matter who you were on the team, from superstars like Stan Musial to young kids like Curt Flood, you worked with your teammates and passed along any wisdom you could.

Fred Hutchinson

The Cards’ manager at the time was Fred Hutchinson. “Hutch” did a great job making sure the team worked together cohesively; unfortunately he could not get them to put runs up on that scoreboard. At one point the team went forty-two innings without scoring a run! Poor Hutch could not pull wins out of that team, and Gussie Busch was becoming impatient. He fired his manager with just ten games left in the 1958 season, and the team limped to a 72-78 finish, sliding back down to fifth in the National League.

Bing Devine and others were frustrated with Gussie’s impatience and eventual removal of Hutchinson as manager, but they could not argue against the beer baron’s wishes. Gussie decided that he wanted Solly Hemus as manager for 1959. Hemus had spent parts of eight seasons playing in the birds on the bat, and when he left to play for Philadelphia in one of “Trader Lane’s” famous traders he personally thanked Gussie for his years in St. Louis and said he would come back anytime. Gussie was impressed by that statement and it convinced him that Hemus would be a great manager for the Cardinals.

Wrong. The following two and a half seasons were borderline traumatic for St. Louis fans, as Hemus made one boneheaded decision after another. He was a solid baseball man, but his incapability to use his black players was not a great move for the team or the city. He refused to use a young Bob Gibson after becoming convinced that the lanky pitcher would never amount to anything. The worst offense, however, was far and away his decision to bench Musial.

That was not an erroneous statement: Hemus started benching Stan the Man. Musial had a down year in 1959, hitting a rather mortal .255/.364/.428, but part of that was the way Hemus utilized both him and Boyer – having them bunt and hit behind the runner rather than just play the game the way they knew how. The thought of not playing the man every day had everyone up in arms, and the actualization of it was worse. How could a manager who so refused to play some of his most talented players for one reason or another expect to be around very long? The team floundered to a 71-83 finished, back down to seventh in the National League.

More change was coming for the Cardinals. Better days had to be coming… right?

Angela Weinhold covers the Cardinals for i70baseball.com and writes at Cardinal Diamond Diaries. You may follow her on Twitter here or follow Cardinal Diamond Diaries here.

During the offseason we have been taking a look at the past, giving readers a timeline of St. Louis baseball throughout history.

Last time we learned about the end of the Gashouse Gang and the rise of Joe Medwick and Johnny Mize. The team had fallen a long way since their World Series win of 1934, but they were working their way back up with a strong 1939 campaign. Was this the start of a rise to the top, or a red herring?

Ray Blades had taken over the team before 1939 and the team had a strong year. People were hoping that the strong arms of Mort Cooper and Lon Warneke and the powerful bats of Joe Medwick, Johnny Mize and Enos Slaughter would carry them back to the top of the standings. Blades had been a players’ manager, but he was also a teacher – he knew the game and was great at helping young players learn and play up to their potential. However, that teaching did not translate well to managing professionals, and the team grew weary of his babying techniques. After a sluggish 14-24 start to the 1940 season, Blades was shown the door. He bounced around as a coach for several various National League teams, but never found footing in any place for more than a couple years at a time.

In his place, owner Sam Breadon turned to Billy Southworth, who had played with the Cardinals in the 1920’s and even managed half of a season back in 1929. Southworth had been managing the Rochester minor league team for most of the ten years between his two managing stints with the Cardinals. The interesting footnote here is that Breadon made the call, not Branch Rickey. Rickey found out about the hiring when he read it in the morning paper, and was more than frustrated with the owner. It was the beginning of the end of the pairs’ longstanding professional relationship. To make matters worse, Southworth made two conditions of his hiring: no player is added to/taken away from the roster without his approval, and no player could talk to upper management without his knowing beforehand. Rickey felt that his wings had been clipped!

Marty Marion

All but lost in all the drama was a young twenty-two year old just breaking in to the majors. Marty Marion had come a long way from the cotton fields of Atlanta, but his agile glove and diving stops in the hole at short showed a smart and savvy ballplayer and person. He could see how little people regarded ballplayers back then. After the rough and tumble ways of the Gashouse Gang, people were wary of ballplayers, especially when it involved doing things like putting them up in hotels or houses or doing any business with them away from the ball field. The boys were perceived as ruffians – callous, rowdy and irresponsible. Sportsman’s Park was often mostly empty during games, as fans stayed away, deciding that the team was not worth coming out to see.

Marion saw the rivalries too. He spoke often about how Mize and Medwick were always competing and really did not care for the other. The front office saw it too. Branch Rickey believed in trading a player at the peak of his career rather than after the parade passed him by. Both Mize and Medwick eventually found themselves on the train out of town, but Medwick went first, finding himself on a train bound to Brooklyn early in the 1940 season. To replace the mighty Medwick, Ernie Koy stepped in and played a solid left to fill in. It was Koy’s only truly solid season, as he only played in the majors for five years and bounced to four different teams in that short time. The fans were sad to see Medwick go, but it did not make that much of a difference in the box office, as the Cardinals were not really drawing that many fans in the first place.

After the trade of Medwick and the manager swap, the Cardinals picked up the pace, and went 69-40 with their new manager in Southworth. It was a strong sign of what was to come in 1941, despite the shift of power from the Reds, who had won the NL pennant in 1939 and 1940, to the Dodgers who were rising to power under manager Leo Durocher. The Cardinals and Dodgers went toe to toe all throughout the season, at one point starting a brawl on three consecutive nights because of all the animosity the two teams held against the other.

The September call ups from the previous year were raring to go for the stretch run in 1941. Stan Musial led the charge, getting twenty hits and batting .426 in twelve games after Enos Slaughter went down with an injury. Harry Walker and Whitey Kurowski were also key call-ups. Stan was the real story. He started the season as a pitcher, but after falling on his shoulder at the end of the previous season, his arm was not what it was before, and the Cardinals decided to make him into an outfielder. He worked his way up from the bottom to the bigs by the end of the season.

Despite the call ups, the Cardinals could not catch up to the Dodgers, and finished the season at 97-56. The team was already preparing for the next season when the horrific bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred, and according to Marty Marion, it felt like everything was going to change. Fortunately for the Cardinals, only one relief pitcher was drafted before spring training, and it was pretty much business as usual for 1942.

As for actual baseball? The Dodgers jumped out in front early. They were leading all the way, and looked to be primed to cruise all the way back to the World Series. In mid-July the team swung down to St. Louis for a doubleheader, and in the first game Enos Slaughter lifted a long fly ball to center. Speedy Pete Reiser ran full-tilt to chase it down, but was not paying attention to where he was going and crashed head first into a concrete wall in right-center. Resier had been hitting .350, but after knocking himself out cold he was never the same, and the Dodgers suddenly found themselves without a key component of the team.

In mid-August, the Cardinals were still about thirteen games back in the standings, but they were also beginning to really gel as a team. Manager Billy Southworth made sure that the team got along, but the boys did not really need him for that. They referred to themselves as ‘a young veteran team,’ and all the rookies were taken in by veteran players and treated well. Pitchers helped each other, and everyone was constantly focused on the game ahead. Catcher Walker Cooper was the jokester of the team, but everyone else took the game very seriously. They were determined to win every day, and were confident that if they lose, so what? They would win again the next day, and that was the case more often than not.

Johnny Beazley

Down the stretch, the Cardinals went 43-9. Johnny Beazley led the team with twenty-one wins, despite being a loner who found himself in an altercation with a porter at a train station who drew a knife and left Beazley bleeding profusely from his pitching hand. Unfortunately this game with two weeks left in the season and the team up only one game on those pesky Dodgers. Somehow, Beazley recovered, and the team went 9-1 in the last ten, while the Dodgers went 10-2. It took a 106-48 record to pull out with the National League crown.

The World Series was waiting, and the New York Yankees were right there ready to derail the Cardinals’ fast track. Just like back in the first Series the Cardinals had played against the Yanks in 1926, there was a fearsome lineup coming at them, led by Joe DiMaggio, Bill Dickey, Phil Rizzuto, Frank Crosetti, and others. The Yankees had won 103 games, as well as their last eight straight World Series appearances, or every appearance since that 1926 Series won by the Cardinals.

The first game was a heartbreaker, losing late to Red Ruffing, but the Cardinals were determined. They won the next game, and the next, and the next, and the next! Who would have imagined that the Cardinals would win four in a row against the mighty Yankees? No one… except the team. They shocked the world, and as a reward, each one got $6,193 as a share. Why were they so excited about this? For many of the players playing for the tight-fisted Breadon and Rickey, that World Series share more than doubled their salary for the season. The Cardinals only reward for the victors came from Sam Breadon’s wife, who bought all the players a drink on the train ride home from New York.

Things were looking to unravel quickly at the end of the year, as on October 19, Branch Rickey turned in his resignation. He was tired of Breadon treating him like he could do better without him there. Rickey went on to Brooklyn to take over the general manager’s position for the Dodgers. His story is far from over as he went on to be the instrumental cog in breaking the color barrier when he signed Jackie Robinson to be the first African-American man to play in Major League Baseball.

In the meantime, players in St. Louis were happy to see him go. They thought that with Rickey gone the salary constraints would be better, and maybe they could get some fair wages. Unfortunately with the war going on, attendance was down across baseball, and everyone was tightening their purse strings. Even Stan Musial himself had to hold out to get a better contract before the 1943 season, eventually getting a raise from $4,200 to $6,250. Considering the fact that both Enos Slaughter and Terry Moore were drafted in the offseason, Musial was the only regular outfielder left!

Rationing for the war meant that rubber for baseballs was not high on the priority list. Commissioner Landis decided that the teams would use what became known as ‘balata balls,’ or dead balls, instead. Home runs were down, power hitters were quieted, but the running ways of the Cardinals were riding high. They jumped out in front and led for all but a few days in July where the Dodgers had managed to tie them.

Stan Musial

They got by on the strong arms of Mort Cooper and Max Lanier, the brilliant catching of Mort’s brother Walker, and Stan Musial’s incredible hitting. Mort got the run support, which is how he went 21-8 with a 2.30 ERA, but Max had to work for his wins, going 15-7 with a miniscule 1.90 ERA. In the meantime, Musial won the batting title and MVP, slapping 220 hits and hitting .357. In the end, Musial claimed he had an easier time thanks to being able to move from left to right field, as well as what he said was a decrease in the quality of pitching because of the war taking so many players.

The team as a whole never played for the big inning. They were a running group, and took the extra base wherever possible, but rarely stole the bases. They played tough, going in spikes up, sliding their way around tags, and slapping the ball out of players’ gloves so as to avoid the out. They won 105 games and marched right back to the Series and right up to those same Yankees that they had beaten the year before.

This year, the Yankees were in bad shape, having lost most of their stars to the draft in the offseason. The Cardinals, however, had lost something worse – their fire. They were confident, but without the desire to win, it was all for naught. The team suffered a few loses throughout the Series outside of the diamond. Mort and Walker Cooper’s father died after game one, and Mort went out and won game two. Whitey Kurowski collided with a Yankees player in the second game so badly it caused him to pass a kidney stone. No one could hit. The Cardinals should have won, but they fell apart, and lost the Series 4-1. They went home with their tails between their legs.

1944 looked to be the Cardinals’ year right from the start. While most teams had been decimated by that point by the draft, the Cardinals had not been hit particularly hard, due to old injuries, odd circumstances like being an only child or supporting parents, etc. Stan Musial was one who was still supporting his parents, but to help out he even went to a war factory and worked there in the offseason to support the troops that way (and probably because he could use the money!).

The main nemesis over the last few years in the Dodgers had been decimated over the offseason, losing most of their prominent players. The Cardinals felt like they would never lose. On September 1, the team had already built up 91 wins, and were not about to quit there. By season’s end, the Pittsburgh Pirates were fighting to stay in second place, and finished with 90 wins exactly. The Cardinals had 105, and led the league in just about every way possible.

Marty Marion won the MVP in 1944, and when they called him to announce the award, his response was, “What’s the MVP?” His leadership led the team, his defense led the team, and he let the team speak for themselves with the bats and from the mound. As a whole, the Cardinals had just 112 errors. They led the league in hits, runs, batting average, doubles and home runs. Four different players led the team in various offensive categories (talk about spreading the wealth)! From the mound, there were four different pitchers with sixteen or more wins, and they led the league in winning percentage, shutouts and earned run average. The team ERA was a miniscule 2.67. They coasted through the regular season and marched on to the Series.

Sportsman's Park - home to the entire 1944 World Series

As a surprise to everyone, the Browns pull out the American League pennant! It would be the only Series in the history of baseball where every game was played inside the same stadium, as the two teams had been sharing Sportsman’s Park for many years. Despite sharing clubhouses, the two teams actually knew very little about each other, but they were excited for the opportunity to play against each other on the grandest of stages in the Fall Classic. The fans were excited too, although many were unsure who they were excited for. Cardinal players assumed that St. Louis was a Browns town, but the Browns saw how more people showed up for Cardinals games. When great plays happened, the batters were often unsure if the fans were cheering for a home run for them or an amazing catch from the opponent! Talk about confusing!

The NL St. Louis team thought that they had the upper hand. They had been to the Series the previous two years, and knew the pressure. The Browns did fight tough, and took the Series to six games. In the end, the Cardinals won 4-2, but both Stan Musial and Max Lanier thought that it was the toughest Series they had ever played in. The top player for the Cardinals in that six game set? None other than infielder Emil Verban.

Wait, who?

Emil Verban was a light hitting infielder who had played the majority of the year at second base for the Cardinals. He was the weakest hitting player on the team, and he was so small that in today’s vernacular he would surely be labeled with the “scrappy” title. Verban had a bone to pick with Don Barnes, the owner of the Browns. Barnes had placed Verban’s wife behind a pole for every game of the Series! When he asked politely for his wife to be moved so she could see the field, Barnes laughed and said he didn’t play well enough to even try to make demands like that. Verban was so furious that he went out and hit .412 for the Series, including three hits alone in the final game to put the nail in the Brownies’ coffin. After the last out was recorded Verban stomped over to Barnes’ owners’ box and pointed at him, reminding him that maybe next time he would not be so rude to a polite request. Who would imagine on a team with Stan Musial, Walker Cooper and Marty Marion that little Emil Verban would be such a hero?

The Cardinals were riding high, winning three straight pennants and two of three Series crowns. How long could they stay on top?

Angela Weinhold covers the Cardinals for i70baseball.com and writes at Cardinal Diamond Diaries. You may follow her on Twitter here or follow Cardinal Diamond Diaries here.

During the offseason we have been taking a look at the past, giving readers a timeline of St. Louis baseball throughout history. Last time we talked about Branch Rickey building the minor leagues and how Rogers Hornsby and Jim Bottomley started building the Cardinals into a powerhouse. However, Hornsby was running his mouth and Cardinals owner Sam Breadon demanded Rickey trade the superstar manager. What would Rickey do now?

As easy as it would have been to trade Hornsby, Branch Rickey knew that it was in the best interests of the team to keep the superstar around and continue to build the team around him. While he hoped that the anger that Breadon felt towards Hornsby would dissipate over the winter, it never really went away, Rickey just ignored it.

Coming into spring training of 1926, Hornsby, who was not one for meetings, actually had one. He pulled everyone into the clubhouse and informed them that if they did not think that the Cardinals were going to win the pennant that year, they should grab their paychecks and head on home. No one moved. Everyone was ready to go, and they were in for an uphill battle.

The Cincinnati Reds were fighting the Cardinals every step of the way throughout the entirety of the season. In June, John McGraw made possibly the worst trade of his entire career when he offered Rickey and Hornsby right fielder Billy Southworth in exchange for center fielder Heinie Mueller. Southworth was in the late stages of his career while Mueller was in the middle of an eleven year career. Mueller wound up toiling in three different cities over the next few years while Southworth had found a home, first in the second spot in the batting order, then as the manager a few years later.

The second move Rickey made was to bring in stellar pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, then nearing the twilight of a Hall of Fame career. All it took from the Cardinals was a $4,000 flyer and a waiver claim to pluck him off of the Cubs, who had tired of his antics. Despite his age (“Old Pete” was 39 when he arrived to the team) Alexander still had a lot left in the tank. However, a long and strange series of events had left him dealing with both epilepsy and alcoholism, a dangerous combination. Whereas Hornsby caused problems with his abominable vocabulary and course manner, Old Pete wore out his welcome by drinking himself under the table, showing up to the park hungover and acting disagreeable towards managers, teammates and anyone else that even looked at him funny.

Grover Cleveland Alexander

At the time of the trade the Cardinals were in fourth place and needing a boost. Alexander and Southworth provided it, Alexander going 16-7 with a 2.91 ERA in the last two-thirds of the season and Southworth slapping out a .317/.364/.488 line while driving in 69 over the same time frame. Southworth also hit the home run that clinched the pennant for the Cardinals. He took extra pleasure in the fact that the game was against McGraw’s Giants – the very manager and team that traded him away earlier in the year.

Yes, the Cardinals had clinched their first pennant since their inception in 1899. Their reward for a long season of hard work? Facing the dreaded New York Yankees and their self-proclaimed “Murderer’s Row” of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and company. After somehow managing a split of the first two games in New York, the Cardinals came home to a ticker-tape parade. They spent most of the end of the season on the road, and had not been home in almost four weeks. The city of St. Louis was bursting at the seams to welcome them home with open arms to celebrate winning the pennant, and after all the pomp and circumstance, the team still had to figure out how to take three more games against those dreaded Yankees.

After getting victimized by some mammoth Babe Ruth home runs in game five, the Cardinals headed back to New York down 3-2, and everyone thought the Series was all but over. “Old Pete” took the ball for game six, but he did not have to work very hard to pull out the win, as the rest of the starting nine put up a ten spot against manager Miller Huggins and the rest of the vaunted New York lineup.

Game seven brought about one of the most peculiar endings of a series in baseball’s history. Jesse Haines, who was a stalwart of the rotation for many years, had started the game and pitched well into the seventh inning, but he was running out of gas. The knuckleballer had worn his fingers to the bone, and when his knuckles started bleeding and Haines could only throw meatball fastballs, Hornsby had no choice but to remove his pitcher and look to the bullpen to save the day.

Who did he call for? None other than Old Pete Alexander, who had pitched the previous day and then went out and got rip roaring drunk after the game to celebrate his victory. He was in the bullpen sleeping off his hangover when teammates had to rouse him and inform him that he was going into the game right away, no time for warming up or even stretching. Hornsby could care less, stating that watching Alexander pitch drunk or hungover was better than watching any other pitcher pitch completely sober.

Old Pete struck out Tony Lazzeri to end the bottom of the seventh, then whipped through the eighth inning, only to find himself facing the top of the order in the ninth. After shutting down the first two batters, Alexander came face-to-face with none other than Babe Ruth himself. The Bambino ran the count full, then took a pitch that by all accounts could have gone either way, depending on which team you were pulling for. Old Pete howled at the umpire who dared to call ball four against him, and Ruth trotted down to first base.

Then, the unbelievable happened: Ruth tried to steal second. Now, don’t get me wrong, Babe Ruth had stolen bases all throughout his career. Not a lot of them, but enough. In 1926 alone he stole 11 bases, and he was determined to pick up one more in this deciding game. The Babe said he wanted to get into scoring position in the off-chance that Bob Muesel was actually able to sneak a hit out of the infield. The plan backfired as catcher Bob O’Farrell shot a bullet of a throw to Hornsby down at second, who stood on the bag with the ball waiting for Ruth to arrive so he could lay down the tag. When Ruth arrived and the final out was recorded, the Cardinals had their first World Series championship and the team mobbed Old Pete, who could only smile and shrug his shoulders, almost as if to say, “No big deal, just doing my job.”

The Cardinals returned to St. Louis as world champions, and spirits were high. However, things were about to come crashing down in a big way. Sam Breadon could not resolve his differences with Rogers Hornsby, so just two months after bringing home the first championship for the city of St. Louis since Charlie Comisky and the Browns back in 1888, the superstar second baseman/manager was sent packing to the New York Giants in exchange for second baseman Frankie Frisch and pitcher Jimmy Ring.

The city was horrified, the team was stunned, and Rickey was vilified. Everyone assumed that Rickey was to blame for the trade, when in reality he felt sick about the trade to the point where he forced Breadon to do it if he was so intent upon trading Hornsby. It looked like a horrible swap – Frisch appeared to be a so-so infielder and Ring had only managed to win eleven games the previous year for the Giants. The trade actually caused Hornsby’s career began to take a sharp turn south. He had a good first year with the Giants, then jumped to the Boston Braves for a season before heading to the Chicago Cubs and winning an MVP there his first year in town (1929). A bone spur slowed down his playing career after that point, but that was the least of his troubles. Gambling kept him broke despite the fact that he was one of the highest paid players in the game. Although he hung around in the majors for another eleven seasons, by his last season he was a broken and humbled man, despite his steadfast anger towards Sam Breadon.

Frankie Frisch

The Cardinals were still a strong team in 1927, despite feeling rather stony in the beginning towards their new second baseman Frisch. Frisch thought St. Louis was great after the cold atmosphere created by the aging and unwavering John McGraw, who had been merciless in his constant ridicule with Frisch. He liked playing for a team that liked playing baseball instead of just going through the motions, miserable because of the manager they were playing for.

“The Fordham Flash” fit in well in St. Louis, doing all the little things that would endear him with the fans, whether it was flashing the leather in the field and setting assist records that still stand to this day, racing around the bases picking up steals, or slapping hits all over the diamond. He could never replace the power of Hornsby, but what he lacked in brawn he made up for in literally every other category. By the end of the 1927 season, the Cardinals found themselves just a game or two out of first in the National League, but they had won over the fans again after what could have been a disastrous break-up when Hornsby left.

Unfortunately the manager position became somewhat of a revolving door after Hornsby left. Catcher Bob O’Farrell got the spot by default for 1927, but he passed it off to Bill McKechnie in 1928, who lost the spot one third of the way through 1929 to Billy Southworth and then Gabby Street, who finally stepped up and took the reins until midway through 1933.

1928 put the Cardinals back on top in the National League. Led by Rickey’s pride and joy of the farm system in Jim Bottomley and Chick Hafey and anchored on the infield by Frisch, the team wrapped up the pennant on the second to last day of the season, and found themselves face to face with nearly the same Yankees team that they had miraculously beat out two years previous.

This year the Series went in favor of the Bronx Bombers, as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig put on a two man show, with Ruth playing the lead as he hit .625 and blasted 3 home runs to Gehrig’s .545 with 4 such shots. Breadon was furious at the dreadful four game beating the Cardinals were handed, and demoted manager McKechnie to the minors, bringing up Rochester manager Billy Southworth. The team was pleased with the idea of Southworth being the player/manager, as he had always been a strong clubhouse presence before agreeing to playing and managing in Rochester during the 1928 season.

Southworth knew how Breadon worked. He wanted a winner, and Billy thought he knew just how to do that – by making sure that the team was in line and under his thumb constantly. He became known as ‘Billy the Heel,’ and the players all knew he was trying way too hard to be the boss, when all he needed to do was keep things on an even keel and treat them like the adults that they were. After stumbling into July with a 43-45 record, Breadon realized his mistake and dropped Southworth back down to the minors, replacing him with the man who had just been ousted in McKechnie. It did not matter. The team finished at 78-74, well off the pace.

Thankfully, help was on the way, and his name was Gabby Street. Who is he? Check in next week!

Angela Weinhold covers the Cardinals for i70baseball.com and writes at Cardinal Diamond Diaries. You may follow her on Twitter here or follow Cardinal Diamond Diaries here.

During the offseason we have been taking a look at the past, giving readers a timeline of St. Louis baseball throughout history. Last time we learned about how Branch Rickey made the jump from the Browns to the Cardinals, and how his sharp work in the front office started to turn around a Cardinals team that had languished in last place since its inception in 1899.

While Branch and Cardinals’ owner Sam Breadon had launched their secret plan to own minor league teams in 1919 when they purchased half of a Class C team in Arkansas, what good would that do them when the players they owned were ready to move up to the next team? Rickey and Breadon put their heads together and kept calling up every contact they could, trying to get in with more minor league clubs.

Some of the contacts were easier than others. Rickey called up one of the owners of the Houston team in the Texas League and said they wanted to buy an 18 percent interest in the team for $15,000, and the owners took him up on his offer, no money down. Rickey had built a reputation for not breaking his word, and people trusted him unwaveringly. Breadon did his part, snaking out a 50 percent interest in the Class A Syracuse team after going out and getting drunk (literally) with the owner of the team during one evening of the winter meetings in Kansas City. Things moved slowly, but by 1925 the Cardinals owned a team at every minor league level, from Class D to Triple A.

Considering the revolutionary nature of this adventure, there were many unique problems. Since the Texas League did not allow higher leagues to own teams in their league, Rickey had to put ownership in the name of a third party. The Houston president tried to sell a budding superstar by the name of Chick Hafey to another team, and when Rickey found out he was forced to match the offer on his own player! Eventually the Texas League challenged his ownership, but Rickey told them that unless they wanted to pay the $500,000 that it would take to buy him out they should be quiet. Not surprisingly they left him alone, and Rickey soon bought out the Houston team, as well as the teams in Little Rock, Syracuse and St. Joseph.

Rogers Hornsby

While all this was going on, baseball was obviously still being played. Now that the Cardinals were actually able to afford to pay their players enough to keep them they were also seeing some success in the standings. In 1922 they even made a push for the pennant! Rogers Hornsby was proving Rickey brilliant by picking up his third consecutive batting title. He hit .370 in 1920, .397 in 1921, and blew everyone out of the water by having one of the single greatest seasons in the history of baseball in 1922, picking up the Triple Crown by leading the league in batting average (.401), home runs (42), and RBIs (152). Just for good measure he also led the league with 46 doubles and 141 runs.

Hornsby was a beast of a man, and hit line drives so hard that fielders feared for their lives and appendages. The classic poet Ogden Nash even referenced Hornsby in his poem “Line-up for Yesterday: An ABC of Baseball Immortals”:

H is for Hornsby

When pitching to Rog

The pitcher would pitch,

Then the pitcher would dodge.

Hornsby was the complete package: hitting for power, fielding sharply, enough confidence to fill a whole team, and the one that everyone overlooked: running. His speed was vastly overrated, and he stretched doubles into triples on a regular basis. He was simply the best, and expected everyone else to recognize his greatness as well. It was creating quite a stir in St. Louis, as many fans spent long afternoons and evenings arguing about which St. Louis hitter was better – the slugging Rajah or “Gorgeous George” Sisler of the Browns. In reality the two were apples and oranges. Sisler had some power and slapped hits in bunches, but Hornsby was a one man wrecking crew, and wanted everyone to know about it.

Jim Bottomley

Hornsby was not the only Cardinal making waves in 1922. “Sunny Jim” Bottomley was called up towards the end of the season, and made a quick impression, hitting .325 in 37 games. His kind and inviting spirit caused him to be the idol of the Knothole Gang kids, and his being one of the first solid prospects to come out of Rickey’s farm system meant that all eyes were on him.

It would be one thing if Bottomley had been just another solid hitter. Instead he provided a rather stark contrast to the cold and callous attitude of Hornsby. He was personable, a clubhouse leader by example rather than by spitfire. Although he was just a rookie in 1922, he was pushing his way to being front and center in just a fraction of a season.

But how about that 1922 season? The Cardinals had a shot, finishing up with an 85-69 record after going 87-66 in the 1921 season. Those two records were the best finishes the team had achieved since the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos season. Yet even with a solid finish, the team still finished eight games back of John McGraw and his champion New York Giants. The reason for it was simple – when a team like the Giants (or Yankees in the AL) got to a certain point in the year and couldn’t quite push over the top, they would just buy whoever they wanted, no matter the pricetag.

Obviously, this still happens to a certain extent today, but the problem was back then it did not matter the date in the season, so teams could pick up whoever they wanted right on through the end of September. Rickey and some of the other front office people from around baseball caused a stir, and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of baseball at the time, finally had to put his foot down. He eventually had to issue an edict proclaiming that after June 15, teams could not trade players, except for waiver transactions. The trade deadline was born.

While Rickey was making waves in the front office and building a farm team from the ground up, he was also the manager on the field. While he had formerly thought of himself as a student of the game, Rickey was now in a position where he could be the teacher as well. He loved charts and spreadsheets, keeping track of statistics that were so new and complicated he was the only one who understood most of them. His mostly uneducated players, many of whom were plucked off back lots and out of coal minds, had no idea what Rickey was talking about. Roy Stockton of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch confirmed their confusion when he wrote, “Rickey’s players could not understand his ideas or execute them. The majority either became wanderers in a labyrinth of theories or took to scoffing at it all.”

The Rajah took exception to how Rickey managed. In 1923 Hornsby publically criticized his manager mid-game. When Rickey tried to pull him aside to sort through the issue after the game, Hornsby was not about to settle down, swearing at the manager and almost causing the mild-mannered visionary to throw a punch. The superstar decided to take matters into his own hands afterward, and complained for several days of a skin infection that held him out of the lineup. When Rickey eventually tried to coax the Rajah into returning, he refused.

Sam Breadon

This could not go on. Rickey went to Sam Breadon and asked him for permission to suspend Hornsby for the rest of the season. To the owner’s credit, he put the team and his manager above his superstar and agreed to the suspension. Things stayed tense between player and manager throughout the entire 1924 season as well, and Breadon, despite his non-confrontational disposition, knew that something had to be done.

During spring training in 1925, Breadon approached Rickey and asked him to consider stepping down as manager. He tried to be logical – Rickey was doing great things in the front office, but he was getting stretched very thin. Would it not be a smart move to focus on one thing wholly instead of trying to be everywhere at once? Rickey agreed and even pretended to name a replacement, but the announcement never came. Rickey did not want to give it up.

After a 13-25 start to the season, Breadon did what he should have done before – he quit asking. He informed Rickey that he would be stepping down immediately and that Rogers Hornsby – the same man that had been a thorn in Rickey’s side for the past two seasons – would be taking over as player/manager. Rickey was dumbfounded, but Breadon was smart. All the great teams had a superstar player manager at the time, from the Tigers with Tris Speaker to the Browns, where George Sisler was leading the charge. The fans responded in droves, and attendance spiked 125,000 above the 1924 season.

Everything looked to be moving along just fine, until Breadon did what no manager likes and entered the clubhouse after a tough loss. Hornsby swore at the owner and ran him out of the clubhouse. Steaming mad, Breadon stormed into Rickey’s office and demanded that the vile superstar be traded immediately to whoever would take him. Now Rickey was in a bind. What would happen to a team and a city that had rallied behind Hornsby and the Cardinals?

Angela Weinhold covers the Cardinals for i70baseball.com and writes at Cardinal Diamond Diaries. You may follow her on Twitter here or follow Cardinal Diamond Diaries here.

During the offseason we have been taking a look at the past, giving readers a timeline of St. Louis baseball throughout history. Last time we learned about how Roger Bresnahan helped create catcher’s gear and Branch Rickey’s start in baseball.

In the executive branch of the Baseball Hall Of Fame there are many legendary baseball names. Some were commissioners such as Ford Frick and Kenesaw Landis. Some were owners such as Tom Yawkey and Walter O’Malley. However, if you as a baseball fan are unaware of the impact that Branch Rickey has played in baseball, you have missed a tremendous story. He is definitely worthy of his own story, but it is safe to say you readers will be reading his name a lot over the next few weeks from me.

"Gorgeous George" Sisler

In 1915, George Sisler, who had been signed with Rickey’s help and played in half of the season, was already showing signs of the player that was to come. He hit .285 that first year while also pitching 70 innings over 15 games (yes, he was also a pitcher his first two years in the bigs). Over the next five years Sisler emerged as one of the league’s top offensive threats.

1920 was an incredible season for Sisler. Not only did he bat .407 with 19 home runs (remember – this was the Dead Ball Era – home runs were not expected from anyone) and a 1.082 on-base plus slugging percentage, but he slapped 257 hits and picked up 399 total bases. In my research I was shocked to see that “Gorgeous George” did not pick up the 1920 MVP award. Then I caught on – the MVP was not awarded between the years of 1914 and 1922. Tricky!

Unfortunately for Sisler and the Browns, one great player does not a contender make. In fact, the Browns never broke 80 wins in this time period. Better days were ahead, but they would happen without their trailblazing general manager.

After the 1915 season a shake-up happened in the Browns front office. Robert Hedges sold his share in the team to Phil Ball, and Mr. Ball wasted no time making changes. His first act was to remove Rickey from his managerial position and relegate him to just working in the front office and working with purchasing and moving excess minor league players. Why the switch? The answer is prohibition.

Phil Ball was a former cowhand whose lifestyle never changed after he made his millions. Branch was a prohibitionist lawyer who had at one time toured the country in support of a national ban on alcohol. Ball was not going to have someone like that on his team, and said as much. Rickey was hidden away in the Browns front office for the entire 1916 season, and thought he was going to be stuck there forever until he received a visit from another attorney – James C. Jones, attorney for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Jones laid it out like this: the Cardinals had played miserably since their inception in 1899, finishing higher than fourth one time in eighteen years. Helene Britton, who had inherited the team six years ago, was looking to sell, and unless someone came up with the $350,000 that Mrs. Britton was hoping for, the Cardinals would probably be moved out of St. Louis. There was a plan in place, however, and if it worked it would make history. So Jones made it simple for Rickey – if it works and the team stayed in St. Louis, would he switch sides and take over as team president?

Rickey did not hesitate. It hardly mattered what this grand scheme was, because at that point all that mattered was getting out of the Browns’ front office and away from Phil Ball’s unwavering anger towards Rickey’s prohibition ways. As it was, however, the investors that were hoping to buy the team had a revolutionary idea that would change baseball, and they simply called it ‘the Knothole Gang.’ What would happen is that the public would be able to buy stock in the Cardinals, and in exchange for every two shares bought, a season ticket would be given to an underprivileged boy in the St. Louis area. The brilliance of this plan was that not only would the franchise would be able to stay in town, but with so many stockholders now based in St. Louis and all of the Knothole Gang tickets, the fanbase took a tremendous swing from watching the mediocre Browns to the abysmal Cardinals.

Rickey making the jump from the American to the National League St. Louis team did not provide the immediate boost that the Cardinals pretty desperately needed. Eventually the Knothole Gang idea took off, but it took a season to really get going. 1917 was not kind to the Cardinals, and things were made worse when the American League got its revenge for luring Rickey to the NL by snatching manager Miller Huggins away with a huge contract and a chance to manage the Yankees. To make matters worse, World War 1 called and stole away Rickey to train soldiers in the field of chemical warfare, thereby causing him to miss the entirety of the 1918 season. Luckily for the Cardinals, the war ended and Rickey returned to the team before the start of the 1919 season.

Rogers Hornsby

Before the 1919 season, the franchise was starting to circle the drain. The vultures gathered, offering exorbitant amounts for basically the only player on the team that had any kind of start power – Rogers Hornsby. The New York Giants called a meeting with Rickey and offered the Cardinals $150,000 – the exact amount of the Cardinals’ debt – in exchange for Hornsby. Rickey said no. Rickey then turned the tables and offered the Giants $50,000 for a youngster named Frankie Frisch. Charles Stoneham, owner of the Giants, was dumbfounded. Rickey didn’t have $50,000 for some kid that had just been signed and had zero experience in the majors. Rickey didn’t have a quarter for a meal!

Determined to land his man, Stoneham upped his offer for Hornsby – $300,000, take it or leave it. John McGraw, the Giants owner, told Stoneham he was out of his mind. No player was worth that much, much less a player that had yet to really earn any recognition. Rickey held firm. He wanted Frisch. Baffled and outraged, the Giants went to the papers, declaring Rickey and the entire Cardinals organization a bunch of fools. Rickey knew better. The Cardinals needed a savior. They needed money. They needed talent.

They needed a farm system.

Rickey launched his plan. He sold 4,000 more shares of stock in the team and raised $100,000 in capital. New majority owner and team president Sam Breadon had given Rickey full reign to do as he pleased with the team, and with that in mind went to work. The first order of business was to convince Phil Ball and the Browns to let the Cardinals rent Sportsman’s Park for home games so they could sell League Park and get out of the red. After the Board of Education and Public Service Corporation bought the land for a combined $275,000, the team was back in the black and ready to get busy with this new plan of purchasing a farm system.

After the 1919 season Rickey purchased half of the Fort Smith, Arkansas franchise in the Class C Western Association. With that agreement the organization said they would not sell minor leaguers out from under Rickey’s nose. The main problem was that this was a Class C team. What would happen when the players were ready to move up the ladder to the next level of the minors? It looked like Rickey needed to buy another team. Find out more about this one next week!

Angela Weinhold covers the Cardinals for i70baseball.com and writes at Cardinal Diamond Diaries. You may follow her on Twitter here or follow Cardinal Diamond Diaries here.

It had been three years since the Whitey Herzog managed Cardinals shocked the baseball world by beating the seemingly invincible Milwaukee Brewers in the 1982 World Series and St. Louis was once again in the postseason. While those ’82 Cardinals were labeled as the Running Rabbits, they were a balanced lineup compared to what Herzog had to work with in 1985.

Upgrades, Downgrades and Stuff We Don’t Want to Talk About

The once dependable position of catcher turned into a huge liability for the 1985 Cardinals. Injuries and declining offensive production from the hero of 1982, Darrell Porter, gave rookie Tom Nieto an opportunity. He’d been impressive in a pair of call-ups in 1984, showing off a good bat to go along with some stellar defense. He became the number 2 catcher when Glenn Brummer was released at the end of the season, perhaps in fear that he might start stealing bases again. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, neither Nieto’s bat, glove, nor arm showed up for most of 1985, leaving a rather unproductive platoon situation at catcher.

Leaving under somewhat of a black cloud in a trade that ranks among the worst in Cardinals history, the Cardinals had lost one of their stars when Keith Hernandez was traded to the Mets for Neil Allen. A former NL MVP and perennial Gold Glove winner, Hernandez was one of the best at his position, playing exceptional defense to go along with some of the best gap-to-gap hitting in the major leagues. George Hendrick had initially taken over for Hernandez and played well, but started showing signs that his best years were behind him. In the spirit of Branch Rickey’s motto, “Always trade a player a year too soon, rather than a year too late” , Hendrick would be traded to Pittsburgh for a left handed starter named John Tudor – more on him later. Prior to the start of the 1985 season, the Cardinals made a blockbuster deal with the San Francisco Giants, sending four players for the slugging first baseman, Jack Clark. Just as with Orlando Cepeda nearly two decades earlier, Clark had been bitten by the injury bug that caused him to wear out his welcome in San Francisco. And like Cepeda, when healthy he became an offensive juggernaut in St. Louis, driving in runs at a frightening pace. Injuries would interrupt all three seasons Clark was in St. Louis, but in two of them (85, 87) he still managed MVP caliber performances.

A young switch hitting Terry Pendleton was the new third baseman but had yet to match Ken Oberkfell’s offensive production. He would prove his worth many times in 1987, and several more times with the Atlanta Braves, but in 1985, Pendleton was a young man learning how to play in the majors. He played well, but not as well as his predecessor.

A youngster named Andy van Slyke was the new right fielder, and while a defensive star, his offensive numbers were a big step down from the former right fielder, George Hendrick. He would eventually wear out his welcome in St. Louis and be shipped off to Pittsburgh for key piece to the ’87 championship team, catcher Tony Pena.

There were a few notable upgrades though.

If Lonnie Smith had been a catalyst at the top of the 1982 batting order, Vince Coleman was a herd of charging buffalo. Even though he was a light hitter and susceptible to striking out, when he did get on base exciting things happened. And generally very quickly. Coleman’s 110 stolen bases terrorized pitchers and catchers throughout the National League and led to a Cardinals trademark of scoring a first inning run without the benefit of a hit. The top of the lineup featuring Vince Coleman, Willie McGee, Tommy Herr and Jack Clark gave many pitchers in the National League the yips.

The other notable improvement was in the pitching staff, both starters and the bullpen. With two 21 game winners at the top of the rotation, and Danny Cox not far behind with 18 wins, the Cardinals seemed well equipped to play a short series but unlikely to be able to withstand the tests of a long season. What seemed like a liability when the season started, suddenly became one of the most feared bullpens when Todd Worrell was called up just prior to the postseason eligibility deadline. The hard throwing Worrell would complement one of the best lefties in the game, Ken Dayley.

The Cardinals had battled the heavily favored New York Mets all season long. Thanks to the amazing 19-1 turnaround from John Tudor, the Cards outlasted the rivals from New York and won the division by 3 games with an unbelievable record of 101-61. Thanks to the season long fight, this Cardinals team learned how to win – in every way imaginable. That would come in handy as the Cardinals were about to face the biggest adversity of the season, if not the decade.

A Rough Start

In the National League Championship Series, just expanded to a best of seven format, the Cardinals would face the Los Angeles Dodgers. Even though the Cardinals had won 6 more games than the boys from Hollywood, the Dodgers were heavily favored in the series. The Cardinals were supposed to be just a speed bump on the Dodger’s road to the World Series.

As the series opened in Los Angeles, it appeared that the experts might be right. The Dodgers won the first two games rather convincingly. Both Fernando Valenzuela and Orel Hershiser seemed to be invincible, and their bullpen didn’t even break a sweat.

The series moved to Busch Stadium and the Cardinals hung on to win game 3. The Cardinals got to Bob Welch early and a combination of Danny Cox, Rick Horton, Todd Worrell and Ken Dayley kept the Dodgers at bay.

This brings us to a Sunday night game on October 13, 1985. Every one of the 53,000 in attendance knew the importance of this game. A win and the series is tied. A loss with as many as two games to be played in Los Angeles would be a very difficult hill to climb. It was now or never time for the Cardinals.

Before the game even started, things took a turn for the worse. No, not worse – the unthinkable. A light rain had started falling and a decision was made to cover the field to keep the infield dry. Vince Coleman failed to notice the automatic tarp rolling onto the field and one of his legs got caught underneath the heavy roll of tarp and machinery. He would suffer a badly bruised leg to go with a chipped bone and would spend the rest of the playoffs on crutches, supporting the team from the dugout.

That hill the Cardinals needed to climb just got a lot higher.

The Rough Inning

When the game finally started, Whitey Herzog would call on John Tudor to turn things around for the Cardinals. Even though he had taken the the loss in Game 1, the lefty had pitched well and there was no reason to think he would not be able to do so again tonight. In the first of a series of questionable managerial decisions from Tommy Lasorda, the Dodgers would counter with former Cardinal and St. Louis native, Jerry Reuss. Reuss had some success in Los Angeles, and while not a top of the rotation guy, he was a solid fourth starter.

Cardinal fans were way more engaged in this game, and it suddenly had less to do with it being the pivotal game in the series. Expectations had been high when Reuss broke in with the the Cardinals in 1970. The tall blonde lefty had been a star in high school and had become an ace at AAA Tulsa. His fortunes with the Cardinals were much different as moments of brilliance were overshadowed by struggles with the strike zone. We had hoped for a second Steve Carlton, but instead got a right handed Mike Torrez. As Reuss enjoyed success with the Pirates and Dodgers, our desire to see the Cardinals beat him increased. Since this was the 17th season for Reuss, there was a lot of pent-up frustration that needed to be released. Throw in a bit of “Win one for the Vincer” and you now have the makings of a huge game.

The Cardinals would erupt in the second inning, one of their most productive in postseason history. After a scoreless first inning, Jack Clark and super sub Cesar Cedeno would lead off the home half of the second inning with singles. Tito Landrum, filling in for the injured Vince Coleman, would single Clark home. The Dodgers made a huge defensive error in letting Pedro Guerrero’s throw go to the plate as it allowed both Cedeno and Landrum to take the extra base. That turned out to be significant when Terry Pendleton grounds out to second base in what would have been an easy double play. The Dodgers only had one play, retiring Pendleton at first, and the Cardinals would score their second run of the inning.

Next up is the light hitting Tom Nieto and he would walk in front of ninth place hitter John Tudor. The Dodgers hoped for an inning ending double play and an end to the rally, but instead dug themselves into a deep deep hole. The Cardinals sensed that this was an opportunity to break the game wide open. Forget the Ozzie Smith “go crazy folks” home run in game five and the three run Jack Clark bomb to win the series in game six, what happened next was the play of the series.

It was not if, but when would Herzog would put on the squeeze play. Aggressive base running is what got the Cardinals this far, and it would have to carry them to the World Series. Everybody in the stadium knew it was coming. The Dodgers were certainly expecting it. Everyone except Reuss. With Landrum running from third, Tudor lays down the bunt and Reuss is unable to field it and everybody was safe. The Cardinals had a three run lead, had been given yet another out, and the Dodgers were clearly rattled. This is when the Cardinals really poured it on, ending the post season career of Jerry Reuss.

In a rare productive out, leadoff hitter Willie McGee would hit an opposite field line drive which would allow Tom Nieto to move up to third base. That turned out to be important as Ozzie Smith followed that with a ground ball deep in the hole at short which scored Nieto. Tommy Herr followed that with a single, scoring Tudor. That would be all for Reuss and the Cardinals fans gave him a sarcastic ovation as he left the field.

Future Cardinal Rick Honeycutt would come in to try to end the rally. Honeycutt was the fifth starter who was sort of an odd man out in a short series. He would face four hitters and fail to retire any of them. Jack Clark would single, Cesar Cedeno would walk, and both Tito Landrum and Terry Pendleton would get their second RBIs of the inning with singles. Both Landrum and Clark were 2-2 in the inning. Tommy Lasorda would go to his third pitcher of the inning, the right hander Bobby Castillo. With a blowout in the making, Castillo was going to be in the game for a long time so that the Dodgers didn’t wear out their bullpen in case they were needed tomorrow afternoon for Game 5. Castillo finally gets the last out by striking out Tom Nieto to end the inning, but not before the Cardinals had a 9-0 lead. With John Tudor pitching, it might as well have been 200-0.

John Tudor did not disappoint as he pitched seven strong innings, allowing just three hits. The lone blemish was a meaningless home run by Bill Madlock to lead off the seventh inning. Tudor would be lifted for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the seventh, saving him for a possible return in game seven, if needed. Rick Horton and Bill Campbell each pitched an inning to seal the 12-2 victory, and the once over-matched Cardinals were beginning to look like National League champions. That would come later with two dramatic late inning home runs, but Cardinal fans knew that with this victory, the series was all but over.

Bob Netherton covers Cardinals history for i70baseball.com and writes at Throatwarbler’s Blog. You may follow Bob on Twitter here or on Facebook here.