Seeing Red
A journey into enemy territory.
In my last post, I chronicled the I-70 Series. I’m trying not to expend too much ink on the Kansas City Royals, although I’ll admit I don’t always succeed. Part of this can’t be helped. The Royals are my hometown team that I’ve followed all my life, and the nature of this newsletter dictates that they will play a central role. But after covering their triumph in the 1985 World Series, I realized that I still had more to say… about the St. Louis Cardinals.
My feelings toward the Cardinals are complicated. At different points in my life, I’ve felt a range of emotions toward the Redbirds— contempt, jealousy, begrudging respect. I’ve even occasionally found myself rooting for them, though that has never come naturally. But I can also say that I’ve rarely felt indifferent.
I’m not one of those Royals fans who considers the Cardinals a real rival. It would be nice if they were, but rivalries require, above all, back and forth success between the opposing sides, and the Royals have never really held up their end of the bargain in that regard.
Sure, Royals fans have the ultimate bragging rights in the series. KC holds a 4-3 advantage in the games that mattered the most, the 1985 World Series, and I’m not likely to let the Cardinals fans in my life forget about that anytime soon. And until we get an encore performance of the I-70 Series, that’s where it will stand.
However, including the 1985 World Series, the all-time series record between the two teams is 76-51 in favor of St. Louis. That’s a .598 winning percentage, which is impressive, though frankly I was surprised it was that close when I looked it up. Having watched them play for the last two-and-a-half decades, it has often felt far more lopsided.
Royals fans have a massive inferiority complex when it comes to the Cardinals, and we come by it honestly. The Cardinals are one of MLB’s oldest and most prestigious franchises, ranking second only to the Yankees for most World Championships with eleven. The Royals, launched as an expansion club in 1969, boast two titles. Numerous Hall-of-Famers sport Cardinals hats on their plaques, as opposed to a single Royal (George Brett).
The Royals have a fantastic fanbase that has stuck with the team through long runs of ineptitude, and have proven in recent years that they will come out in force if the club will just provide them with even the slimmest hope of success. Meanwhile, we have to constantly listen to people blather on about how St. Louis has the best fans in baseball, and that it’s the best baseball town in America.
A lot of this talk seems to come from St. Louis fans themselves, who are never shy about patting themselves on the back— and I’m pretty sure the rest comes directly from Bob Costas. I could point out that its not hard to fill the ballpark if your team is consistently one of the best in baseball (unless you’re in Tampa, apparently), but it feels ridiculous to criticize a fanbase for wanting to support a successful team, even if their detractors often note that St. Louis crowds lack passion and are quick to leave early if the team is behind.
I went to my first Cardinals game this past summer. We sat in the RF bleachers, and the park was full to watch the first place Cards take on the Cubs. I thought the energy at Busch was perfectly fine, but I would take issue with the frequently made assertion that Cardinals fans are the most knowledgeable in baseball. The five idiots sitting behind us didn’t exactly wow me with their baseball acumen, and the lame insults they lobbed at the Cubs had to be some of the worst ever uttered in a major league stadium. Plus, one of them had a really annoying laugh. But I digress.
Aside from the vastly one-sided head-to-head results over the last twenty-five years, the main reason I’ve never considered the Cardinals a rival is that they simply didn’t play the Royals when I was a kid. Outside of the 1985 World Series, the only time the two clubs played before the advent of interleague play in 1997 were meaningless spring training games.
But there was more to it than that. I actually kind of liked the Cardinals back then. And it makes sense, the more I think about it. I had no reason to view the Cardinals as a threat. They were never going to play Kansas City in the regular season, and the only chance of a postseason rematch was in the World Series. The odds of that happening again were remote, and if it did, well, the Royals had more than proven that they could handle their business.
Beyond that, the two teams mirrored each other in a number of ways. The Royals couldn’t match the Cardinals in terms of history, but their resumes since the mid-70’s were remarkably similar. In fact, the Royals had won far more division titles and made more playoff appearances over that span, though each of them had won a World Title— St. Louis in 1982, KC in 1985.
In the years that followed, St. Louis would make one more World Series appearance, losing to the Minnesota Twins in seven games in 1987. The Royals finished two games behind the Twins in the AL West that season, narrowly missing the playoffs themselves. Both teams would alternate between mediocre and good (though never good enough to make the playoffs) for the rest of the 80’s, before continuing to fade in the early 90’s.
They even played a similar style of baseball during this period, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Whitey Herzog managed the Cardinals from 1980-90, and a good portion of the Royals’ championship core had been assembled during Herzog’s previous tenure as Kansas City’s manager.
Both teams were built around the Whiteyball principles of speed, high on-base percentage, defense, and quality pitching. Kansas City players like Willie Wilson, George Brett, Hal McRae, and Bret Saberhagen could have easily swapped places with Cardinals stars Willie McGee, Andy Van Slyke, and John Tudor, and both sides would have felt at home in their new environments.
Heck, Darrell Porter, the Cardinals starting catcher in 1985, was the Royals’ starting catcher during their 1980 World Series run. And just to take it a step further, OF Lonnie Smith was dealt from St. Louis to Kansas City during the 1985 season, making him the first player in MLB history to play against the team he began the year with in the World Series.
This goes a long way toward explaining why I liked so many of their players back then. My personal favorite was probably Andy Van Slyke. In one of those little tricks of memory, I remember him being the Cardinals’ primary CF back in the mid-80’s, though he actually spent most of his time in RF because of his strong arm.
That arm helped him win five Gold Gloves over the course of his career, and landed him three All-Star appearances. He was frequently among the NL leaders in outfield assists in his prime, racking up 13 put-outs in 1985, 10 in 1986, 11 in 1987, and 12 in 1988.
His career stats prove he was no slouch with the bat either: .274/.349/.443, 164 HR, 792 RBI, 1,562 H, 835 R, 293 Doubles, 91 Triples, .792 OPS, 119 OPS+, 41.3 WAR
Van Slyke could move on the basepaths too. He stole 245 bases in his career and recorded an inside-the-park home run in 1986, though this aspect of his game was often overshadowed by his even speedier teammates, Vince Coleman and Willie McGee.
Coleman’s game-changing speed has been covered extensively in a previous post, but McGee deserves a moment in the spotlight. The career numbers don’t necessarily support it, but there’s an argument to be made that McGee was the best of St. Louis’ core three outfielders.
To this day, the guy probably gets more attention for his physical appearance, which is a shame. I’ll admit that he might not be the most conventionally handsome man. Howard Cosell nicknamed him E.T. during the 1982 World Series because of his unusual “alien” looks, in what might be one of the meanest moments in sports broadcasting history. McGee didn’t appreciate it, and comments like that probably contributed to his notoriously shy demeanor.
None of that should have any impact on how we view his baseball legacy. While Cosell was poking fun at him, McGee was busting out on to the national stage with one of the greatest individual performances in World Series history.
In Game 3, he smacked two home runs and bookended the game with two highlight reel catches in CF. The first was a leaping grab to rob Paul Molitor of extra bases at the warning track in the first inning, and the second stole a home run from Gorman Thomas in the bottom of the ninth. And he did this all while wearing one of the greatest powder blue uniforms this world has ever seen.
Unlike in 1982, the Fall Classic didn’t go the Cardinals’ way in 1985, but McGee had his best season, winning the National League MVP. Take a look at his 1985 statline:
.353/.384/.503, 10 HR, 82 RBI, 26 Doubles, 18 Triples, 56 SB, .887 OPS, 147 OPS+
Compare to his career stats:
The latter numbers don’t quite hold up with his peak, but McGee still had his fair share of other notable moments. He hit for the cycle in 1984, batted .370 for the Cardinals in the 1987 World Series, and won the 1990 NL batting title, despite being traded to Oakland in late August.
1990 marked the end of the Whiteyball Cardinals, as Herzog resigned control of the struggling club, and McGee was traded a few months later. Coleman departed for the Mets in free agency after the season, and Van Slyke was already gone, having been traded to Pittsburgh after the 1986 season. He was a key piece alongside Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla on the 1991 and 1992 NL East champion Pirate teams.
I fondly remember those late 80’s Cardinals teams, and not just for their outstanding outfield. They had quality players all around the diamond, like Ozzie Smith, Darrell Porter and then Tony Pena at catcher, Jack Clark, Terry Pendleton, and Tommy Herr. They had great pitchers too, with a rotation that included John Tudor, Joaquin Andujar, and Danny Cox.
Living on the Kansas-Missouri border, roughly an hour away from both Kansas City and Topeka, we picked up the network affiliates from each city on our rabbit ears. Channel 4 in Kansas City showed the Royals’ road games back then— due to blackout rules, only road games were shown on local channels.
But we also picked up KQ2, an ABC affiliate based in St. Joseph, MO. And even though St. Joseph is firmly in the Kansas City viewing footprint, they used to air Cardinals game on a fairly regular basis when I was a kid. I don’t know why, and I never questioned it. Long before I ever had ESPN, TBS, or WGN in my house, these were extra games I could watch. Not only that, but National League games— an entirely new set of teams to watch. I loved it.
I also used to listen to Cardinals games on AM radio. I could pick up their signal on the stereo in my room, and when the Royals weren’t playing, they were my baseball fallback. During the school year, when I had a stricter bedtime, my mom would let me leave the radio on when I laid down for the night. I fell asleep listening to legendary play-by-play man Jack Buck more times than I can count, leaving a healthy appreciation for Cardinals baseball ingrained in my brain for years to come.
That appreciation persisted until the early 2000’s. Both the Royals and Cardinals were middling teams for most of the 90’s, though the Cardinals saw a bit of an uptick in the latter part of the decade after hiring Tony LaRussa as manager and acquiring Mark McGwire. I’ve gone on record as rooting for McGwire during the now-tainted home run chase of 1998, but something changed in the immediate aftermath.
This had nothing to do with the PED scandal surrounding McGwire, and everything to do with the drastic change of fortunes the two clubs experienced in the early twenty-first century. In addition to the Cardinals’ head-to-head success in interleague play, they reasserted themselves as one of baseball’s premier organizations, while the Royals basically fell off the map.
The Cardinals have regularly churned out top-notch talent, while KC struggles to develop a single quality pitcher. St. Louis casually let a generational talent like Albert Pujols walk in free agency, and didn’t miss a step replacing him with homegrown talent. They make deals for MVP caliber players like Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt, while Royals fans feel lucky if their team splurges on a bargain bin deal for a journeyman off the spare parts heap.
The World Series tally over the last two decades is actually closer than just about any other comparison point between the two franchises. The Royals have played in two (2014, 2015), and won one (2015). The Cards have played in four (2004, 2006, 2011, 2013), and taken home two trophies (2006, 2011).
Obviously, this count favors St. Louis, but considering how hard it is to reach the World Series, let alone win it, both teams can hold their heads high. The disparity comes in overall success. The Royals are efficient— they’ve gone to the World Series every time they’ve reached the postseason since the turn of the century, but they’ve only reached the playoffs twice. In fact, they’ve only seriously contended twice. Maybe three or four times, if I’m being very generous.
St. Louis, on the other hand, has only missed the playoffs six times since 2000. That’s ridiculous. And they’ve never fielded a truly terrible team in that interval. By contrast, the Royals have posted a whopping six 100 loss seasons. Now do you understand why I’ve grown to hate the Cardinals?
A decade or so ago, I nearly softened my stance. Or at least I tried. I was at a flea market and I found a brand new Cardinals hat on sale for five bucks. It was in perfect condition, and I have to give it to St. Louis— their gear is top notch. Their uniforms have always been amongst the best in baseball, and the red hats with the white interlocked StL across it are undeniably sharp.
I needed a new hat and the price was right, so I tried it on. Immediately, I glanced back over my shoulder. I felt like a criminal being caught in the act, but no one else there seemed to care. With that in mind, I reminded myself of all those old Cardinals players I liked— Van Slyke, McGee, Pendleton, etc.… That helped take away some of the sting.
At that time, the Cardinals were barreling toward yet another winning season and World Series berth, and the Royals were still mired in irrelevancy. Was I not allowed to wear the apparel of a champion? Was that so wrong? What had the Royals done in the last three decades to earn my loyalty?
I bought the hat and wore it for the next several months. The opportunity for a major reinvention was there. I could have remade myself as a Cardinals fan and no one would have likely batted an eye. The Royals were completely off the radar, and the temptation to follow a team that was in contention every year was seductive and strong.
Ultimately, I resisted. I tossed the Cardinals hat into the back of the closet, and chose to persevere with the Royals. This was totally worth it in 2014 and 2015, although that success was short-lived. Still, I’m glad I didn’t sully it with a cross-state affair I would have regretted.
The Cardinals hat, meanwhile, gathered dust for the next few years until my son claimed it. He was just starting to get into baseball and he wanted a hat of his own. I wasn’t crazy about him rocking St. Louis merchandise, but he needed a hat and I was willing to part with that one.
He wore it for about a year as he immersed himself in the game. I even have some great pictures of him in it. We’re playing catch in the backyard, and my wife managed to catch him in mid-delivery of his pitching motion. They’re fantastic shots, worthy of being on a baseball card. I posted them on social media, albeit with the disclaimer that I didn’t support his usage of a Cardinals hat.
A few months after that, the hat was gone. I found it in a box of clothes we were collecting for goodwill. When I asked my son why he was getting rid of it, he shrugged. “I can’t be wearing Cardinals gear,” he said.
The more he’d followed the game and learned its intricacies, the stronger his allegiance to his hometown Royals had grown. He was a full-blooded Royals fan now, and while it was still fine for him to wear his Juan Soto Washington Nationals shirt or display the Boston Red Sox pennant his Maine-born grandmother had given him, rocking a Cardinals hat was out of the question.
So what do I know? Maybe it is way more of a rivalry than I ever realized.
Go Royals. Beat St. Louis.
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