A red carpet greets baseball royalty
By Derrick Goold
It's been 41 years since the giants of their industry, the New York Yankees, left town, bested again at the game they've dominated everywhere else for nearly four generations.
With the warm-up act of a World Series rematch against the Boston Red Sox as prelude, the New York Yankees, baseball's monarchy, returns this week to the territory it never could conquer. The Cardinals host the East Coast's premier ball clubs for six games over the next seven days - both teams' first regular-season visits to the Cardinals' home ever -in what promises to be a week that makes history even as it relives history.
Roll out the red carpet for baseball's royalty ... Cardinal red.
"When we played the Yankees in '64, it was great - we had everything to gain," said Mike Shannon, a postseason rookie when the Cardinals downed the Yankees in the 1964 World Series. "Hell, that was perfect. I was a go from the get-go. And that's how I see it any time you play a club like them. Same thing when you play the Cardinals. They've got to think they've got the biggest fight they ever had in their lives....<SCRIPT language=javascript><!-- // beginDisplayAds("Frame1","","");// --></SCRIPT><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1 src="http://OAS-Central.RealMedia.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_jx.ads/www.stltoday.com/sports/cards/1965606816@Frame1" type=text/javascript></SCRIPT> <TABLE style="CLEAR: left; MARGIN-RIGHT: 4px" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=left width=180 height=150>
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"Any time you play them, it was a chance to show that we were there, too. Here we are, boys, come and get it."
Combined, the three clubs that will play at Busch Stadium this week have won 41 World Series, appearing in 57 of the 100 World Series played. In 102 years, there have been only 36 postseasons that didn't include at least one of this trinity. The first series, which starts Monday, casts the opponents from last fall's World Series - the Red Sox returning to the field where they won their first championship in 86 years.
Only the Yankees could make that series the appetizer.
When the Yankees and Cardinals open a three-game series next weekend, a total of 35 World Series titles and 45 pennants will be on the field in those two franchises. The Yankees lead baseball with 26 titles, and the Cardinals are No. 2 with nine, yet the Cardinals hold a 3-2 edge in World Series meetings between the two. The Yankees have not played in St. Louis since losing Game 7 of the 1964 series.
"I wish I could be there," said Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, the manager of the Yankees in that series and a St. Louis native. "Good fun. Real good teams. My team in my hometown. It would be great to be there."
Seems Yogi, who has a scheduling conflict, is one of the few who won't be.
Bing Devine, the architect of that 1964 club, said his kids are using the Yankee series as a reason to get together, a rare occurrence. George Steinbrenner's photo has already arrived at Charlie Gitto's.
The Boss, owner of the Yankees, sent it and a letter a few weeks ago. Gitto said it's already hanging up at his downtown restaurant, Charlie Gitto's Pasta House. It reads, signed in silver: "To Charlie. Best from the Yankees." Call it preparatory patronage. It's one of the few autographed photos hanging there of a famous person who is coming - as to opposed to already has been - to Gitto's.
"As diehard as St. Louis fans are, they've probably been dying to get the Yankees here," Cardinals starting pitcher Matt Morris said. "They've got great players - Derek Jeter, A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez). These guys I don't think have ever stepped foot in Busch Stadium. It will be good for the Yankees to see what St. Louis is all about, what our franchise and our fans are all about."
The Cardinals already have done big, big business on these two series. A total of 279,000 tickets, some at the new premium prices, have been sold for the six games. There are standing-room-only tickets remaining for Monday's game and nary a ticket available for the Yankee series. The Cardinals have sold 48,000 for each of the three games.
When the Cardinals saw that American League East teams would be on their interleague schedule, they requested visits from the Yankees and Red Sox to help mark Busch Stadium's final season.
The press box is bracing for a crush of media, particularly when the Yankee horde descends. Saturday's game will be televised live to Japan.
Such is the paparazzi for baseball's kings.
"There is some magic about the (Yankees and Cardinals)," Devine said. "The name. The insignias. It attracts people and holds their attention, and then they hold it by how much they win and how well they play."
With due respect to the Dodgers - of Brooklyn and Los Angeles - the three teams to play in St. Louis this weekend have the rare royal pedigree of crown-jewel ball clubs. They have the championships. ("It seems like every time we play an American League team in interleague play," Cardinal manager Tony La Russa said, "you're playing a team you've been in the World Series against.")
Cardinals team chairman Bill DeWitt Jr., who was a batboy for the St. Louis Browns, recalls, "The Cardinals I remember as the Yankees of the National League. They had such a devoted following, such great players and so many Hall of Famers. There was Brooklyn, and obviously the Giants, but the Cardinals always had that air about them.
"I remember Sportsmans Park in the outfield. They had the names of the American League team 1 through 8, all on metal placards, The order of them changed, depending on what team was in first, which team was last, which team was in third. The Yankees were always at the top. They never seemed to move. Not much has changed."
Much in common
There's more to it than titles, like radio towers and Roger Maris. All three clubs have a far-reaching, multi-generation diaspora of fans. They have memorable stars, from one-name icons like Stan, Ted and Babe to the nicknames like Gibby, Yaz and The Chairman of the Board (Whitey Ford). They have fierce rivals. Boston has the Yankees, the Cardinals have the Cubs and the Yankees have every team.
"I remember going into New York with the Browns and we'd be on a 15-game losing streak and they would be on a 13-game winning streak and we'd win," said Don "Footsie" Lenhardt, a former Brown and Red Sock. "The press would be coming into the clubhouse and you thought we'd have won the World Series. Always wanted to play for the Red Sox and beat the Yankees."
The trinity shares symbiotic roots.
The story of the Red Sox cannot be told without also telling the Yankees' history. Much of the Cardinals' fame was earned by defeating the Sox and Yankees in World Series, as in 1964, the series that inspired David Halberstam's bestseller, "October 1964". It's no coincidence, many people said, that these teams cross-pollinate talent, too. Success requires successful players and successful teams know where to find them. Roger Maris came from the Yankees to the Cardinals to win a World Series against Boston in 1967. Edgar Renteria switched from the Cardinals to the Red Sox over the winter after losing to Boston in October. Cy Young went from St. Louis to Boston. Roger Clemens has won a Cy Young Award with both Boston and New York.
Heck, Cardinals manager Johnny Keane pulled a beat 'em, join 'em switcheroo after the '64 series, going from St. Louis to replace Berra as the Yankees' skipper.
"You put on those 'birds on the bats,' you put that uniform on and you have to come up a step," Shannon said. "Same for the Yankees, and I'm sure that Boston feels this way because of Stan Musial, because of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, because of Ted Williams and Johnny Pesky. You have to step up because you are going to be compared to those guys.
"You are now one of those guys."
Top teams in baseball
Boston, last season excused, has had anguish to remain relevant.
The Yankees and the Cardinals have innovation, logos and rings.
"Looking back over every decade and they are the top teams in baseball," said Glenn Stout, a baseball historian and editor of both the Yankees Century and Red Sox Century. "They haven't had real extended down periods, unlike virtually every other team. The Dodgers were down for a long time. The Red Sox had their drought. The Cubs have had an extended drought.
"If you look at the history, they're (first and second) in titles and really the Yankees and the Cardinals had the biggest markets," Stout said. "The Yankees were the team of New York. The Cardinals were the South, the West, the Midwest - the farthest team west. They were the team of the city, and the Cardinals were for everybody who lived everywhere else."
The Yankee empire gets far more publicity now than the Cardinals, and there are numbers and anecdotes to prove it. But Berra pointed out so many of the early broadcasters - like Dizzy Dean - had St. Louis ties. In 2004, the Yankees drew a record 165,240 fans to Dodger Stadium for their interleague visit. In the past three seasons, the Yankees have been the best road draw. (So far this season it's Boston.) In 2002, the Yankees visited Denver for the first time in the regular season and drew a three-game attendance of 146,475.
In one of those games, Colorado first baseman Todd Helton said he ducked out of the dugout when his team had a runner at first to use the restroom. As he did he heard the crowd roar and felt Coors Field shimmy. Awesome, he thought. A two-run homer.
Nope.
It was the Yankees fans cheering a double play.
Denver, however, was considered a Cardinal town. In 1990, The Denver Post ran a poll to "adopt" a big-league team. The Cubs were the morning-line favorite mainly because of WGN, but KMOX trumped and the Cardinals won the phone-in vote. It is only a geographic outpost where the Cardinals and Yankees duel, such as they have done for years despite sparse meetings.
Much is made of the Sox-Yanks rivalry - percolating as it does all season with many, many meetings - but that rivalry is one-sided. The Yankees true challenger historically is, arguably, the Cardinals. Branch Rickey's farm system, the first of its type and the forefather of the current minor leagues, and Rickey's team-building knack thrust the Cardinals into regular competition with the Yankees.
"For just about as long as the Yankees have been the dominant force in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals have been the sport's Seabiscuit," writes Henry D. Fetter in his book, "Taking on the Yankees." "The Cardinals were ... underdog upstarts who overcame uncompromising beginnings and an unfavorable environment to take the measure of their sport's royalty."
Starting in 1923, over the next three decades linking the Babe Ruth Yankees of the '20s to Joe DiMaggio Yankees of the '30s and '40s to the Yogi Berra/Mickey Mantle Yankees of the '50s, only one team beat them in the World Series.
The Cardinals.
"They were the pattern," long-time Cardinal exec Devine said. "You wanted a pattern, a model, it was them. We never played the Yankees unless it was the World Series, but you still took a look at them and kept track of how they were doing. You want to be the best, you had to beat them. You wanted to win the World Series, it was a good chance you'd have to beat them.
"And it's still the case."
"I don't know how you're going to beat it," Shannon said. "You've got the American League champions. You've got the National League champions. And you've got the greatest franchise winning-wise in the Yankees. It's got to be the greatest week in '05."
Derrick Goold covers the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for the Post-Dispatch.
By Derrick Goold
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/05/2005It's been 41 years since the giants of their industry, the New York Yankees, left town, bested again at the game they've dominated everywhere else for nearly four generations.
With the warm-up act of a World Series rematch against the Boston Red Sox as prelude, the New York Yankees, baseball's monarchy, returns this week to the territory it never could conquer. The Cardinals host the East Coast's premier ball clubs for six games over the next seven days - both teams' first regular-season visits to the Cardinals' home ever -in what promises to be a week that makes history even as it relives history.
Roll out the red carpet for baseball's royalty ... Cardinal red.
"When we played the Yankees in '64, it was great - we had everything to gain," said Mike Shannon, a postseason rookie when the Cardinals downed the Yankees in the 1964 World Series. "Hell, that was perfect. I was a go from the get-go. And that's how I see it any time you play a club like them. Same thing when you play the Cardinals. They've got to think they've got the biggest fight they ever had in their lives....<SCRIPT language=javascript><!-- // beginDisplayAds("Frame1","","");// --></SCRIPT><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1 src="http://OAS-Central.RealMedia.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_jx.ads/www.stltoday.com/sports/cards/1965606816@Frame1" type=text/javascript></SCRIPT> <TABLE style="CLEAR: left; MARGIN-RIGHT: 4px" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=left width=180 height=150>
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"Any time you play them, it was a chance to show that we were there, too. Here we are, boys, come and get it."
Combined, the three clubs that will play at Busch Stadium this week have won 41 World Series, appearing in 57 of the 100 World Series played. In 102 years, there have been only 36 postseasons that didn't include at least one of this trinity. The first series, which starts Monday, casts the opponents from last fall's World Series - the Red Sox returning to the field where they won their first championship in 86 years.
Only the Yankees could make that series the appetizer.
When the Yankees and Cardinals open a three-game series next weekend, a total of 35 World Series titles and 45 pennants will be on the field in those two franchises. The Yankees lead baseball with 26 titles, and the Cardinals are No. 2 with nine, yet the Cardinals hold a 3-2 edge in World Series meetings between the two. The Yankees have not played in St. Louis since losing Game 7 of the 1964 series.
"I wish I could be there," said Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, the manager of the Yankees in that series and a St. Louis native. "Good fun. Real good teams. My team in my hometown. It would be great to be there."
Seems Yogi, who has a scheduling conflict, is one of the few who won't be.
Bing Devine, the architect of that 1964 club, said his kids are using the Yankee series as a reason to get together, a rare occurrence. George Steinbrenner's photo has already arrived at Charlie Gitto's.
The Boss, owner of the Yankees, sent it and a letter a few weeks ago. Gitto said it's already hanging up at his downtown restaurant, Charlie Gitto's Pasta House. It reads, signed in silver: "To Charlie. Best from the Yankees." Call it preparatory patronage. It's one of the few autographed photos hanging there of a famous person who is coming - as to opposed to already has been - to Gitto's.
"As diehard as St. Louis fans are, they've probably been dying to get the Yankees here," Cardinals starting pitcher Matt Morris said. "They've got great players - Derek Jeter, A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez). These guys I don't think have ever stepped foot in Busch Stadium. It will be good for the Yankees to see what St. Louis is all about, what our franchise and our fans are all about."
The Cardinals already have done big, big business on these two series. A total of 279,000 tickets, some at the new premium prices, have been sold for the six games. There are standing-room-only tickets remaining for Monday's game and nary a ticket available for the Yankee series. The Cardinals have sold 48,000 for each of the three games.
When the Cardinals saw that American League East teams would be on their interleague schedule, they requested visits from the Yankees and Red Sox to help mark Busch Stadium's final season.
The press box is bracing for a crush of media, particularly when the Yankee horde descends. Saturday's game will be televised live to Japan.
Such is the paparazzi for baseball's kings.
"There is some magic about the (Yankees and Cardinals)," Devine said. "The name. The insignias. It attracts people and holds their attention, and then they hold it by how much they win and how well they play."
With due respect to the Dodgers - of Brooklyn and Los Angeles - the three teams to play in St. Louis this weekend have the rare royal pedigree of crown-jewel ball clubs. They have the championships. ("It seems like every time we play an American League team in interleague play," Cardinal manager Tony La Russa said, "you're playing a team you've been in the World Series against.")
Cardinals team chairman Bill DeWitt Jr., who was a batboy for the St. Louis Browns, recalls, "The Cardinals I remember as the Yankees of the National League. They had such a devoted following, such great players and so many Hall of Famers. There was Brooklyn, and obviously the Giants, but the Cardinals always had that air about them.
"I remember Sportsmans Park in the outfield. They had the names of the American League team 1 through 8, all on metal placards, The order of them changed, depending on what team was in first, which team was last, which team was in third. The Yankees were always at the top. They never seemed to move. Not much has changed."
Much in common
There's more to it than titles, like radio towers and Roger Maris. All three clubs have a far-reaching, multi-generation diaspora of fans. They have memorable stars, from one-name icons like Stan, Ted and Babe to the nicknames like Gibby, Yaz and The Chairman of the Board (Whitey Ford). They have fierce rivals. Boston has the Yankees, the Cardinals have the Cubs and the Yankees have every team.
"I remember going into New York with the Browns and we'd be on a 15-game losing streak and they would be on a 13-game winning streak and we'd win," said Don "Footsie" Lenhardt, a former Brown and Red Sock. "The press would be coming into the clubhouse and you thought we'd have won the World Series. Always wanted to play for the Red Sox and beat the Yankees."
The trinity shares symbiotic roots.
The story of the Red Sox cannot be told without also telling the Yankees' history. Much of the Cardinals' fame was earned by defeating the Sox and Yankees in World Series, as in 1964, the series that inspired David Halberstam's bestseller, "October 1964". It's no coincidence, many people said, that these teams cross-pollinate talent, too. Success requires successful players and successful teams know where to find them. Roger Maris came from the Yankees to the Cardinals to win a World Series against Boston in 1967. Edgar Renteria switched from the Cardinals to the Red Sox over the winter after losing to Boston in October. Cy Young went from St. Louis to Boston. Roger Clemens has won a Cy Young Award with both Boston and New York.
Heck, Cardinals manager Johnny Keane pulled a beat 'em, join 'em switcheroo after the '64 series, going from St. Louis to replace Berra as the Yankees' skipper.
"You put on those 'birds on the bats,' you put that uniform on and you have to come up a step," Shannon said. "Same for the Yankees, and I'm sure that Boston feels this way because of Stan Musial, because of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, because of Ted Williams and Johnny Pesky. You have to step up because you are going to be compared to those guys.
"You are now one of those guys."
Top teams in baseball
Boston, last season excused, has had anguish to remain relevant.
The Yankees and the Cardinals have innovation, logos and rings.
"Looking back over every decade and they are the top teams in baseball," said Glenn Stout, a baseball historian and editor of both the Yankees Century and Red Sox Century. "They haven't had real extended down periods, unlike virtually every other team. The Dodgers were down for a long time. The Red Sox had their drought. The Cubs have had an extended drought.
"If you look at the history, they're (first and second) in titles and really the Yankees and the Cardinals had the biggest markets," Stout said. "The Yankees were the team of New York. The Cardinals were the South, the West, the Midwest - the farthest team west. They were the team of the city, and the Cardinals were for everybody who lived everywhere else."
The Yankee empire gets far more publicity now than the Cardinals, and there are numbers and anecdotes to prove it. But Berra pointed out so many of the early broadcasters - like Dizzy Dean - had St. Louis ties. In 2004, the Yankees drew a record 165,240 fans to Dodger Stadium for their interleague visit. In the past three seasons, the Yankees have been the best road draw. (So far this season it's Boston.) In 2002, the Yankees visited Denver for the first time in the regular season and drew a three-game attendance of 146,475.
In one of those games, Colorado first baseman Todd Helton said he ducked out of the dugout when his team had a runner at first to use the restroom. As he did he heard the crowd roar and felt Coors Field shimmy. Awesome, he thought. A two-run homer.
Nope.
It was the Yankees fans cheering a double play.
Denver, however, was considered a Cardinal town. In 1990, The Denver Post ran a poll to "adopt" a big-league team. The Cubs were the morning-line favorite mainly because of WGN, but KMOX trumped and the Cardinals won the phone-in vote. It is only a geographic outpost where the Cardinals and Yankees duel, such as they have done for years despite sparse meetings.
Much is made of the Sox-Yanks rivalry - percolating as it does all season with many, many meetings - but that rivalry is one-sided. The Yankees true challenger historically is, arguably, the Cardinals. Branch Rickey's farm system, the first of its type and the forefather of the current minor leagues, and Rickey's team-building knack thrust the Cardinals into regular competition with the Yankees.
"For just about as long as the Yankees have been the dominant force in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals have been the sport's Seabiscuit," writes Henry D. Fetter in his book, "Taking on the Yankees." "The Cardinals were ... underdog upstarts who overcame uncompromising beginnings and an unfavorable environment to take the measure of their sport's royalty."
Starting in 1923, over the next three decades linking the Babe Ruth Yankees of the '20s to Joe DiMaggio Yankees of the '30s and '40s to the Yogi Berra/Mickey Mantle Yankees of the '50s, only one team beat them in the World Series.
The Cardinals.
"They were the pattern," long-time Cardinal exec Devine said. "You wanted a pattern, a model, it was them. We never played the Yankees unless it was the World Series, but you still took a look at them and kept track of how they were doing. You want to be the best, you had to beat them. You wanted to win the World Series, it was a good chance you'd have to beat them.
"And it's still the case."
"I don't know how you're going to beat it," Shannon said. "You've got the American League champions. You've got the National League champions. And you've got the greatest franchise winning-wise in the Yankees. It's got to be the greatest week in '05."
Derrick Goold covers the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for the Post-Dispatch.
