The Cardinals are bustling about the sprawling grounds of their spring-training complex in Jupiter. This is how baseball's tradition restarts every year.
I’m a year older. I’ll be 67 on Sunday. But when baseball reappears, I feel a year younger. No other sport has that impact on me. No other sport has baseball’s Zen. I can’t explain it. For a variety of reasons, it’s been a challenging 12 months for me. (No worries; I’m OK.) We all go through it. But baseball is soothing. I can’t say baseball heals me. But baseball helps me.
I’m actually more excited about the 2026 Cardinals because of the freshness of it all. They’re rebuilding. They’re younger, and fresher. They’re new. After three straight mediocre years of missing the playoffs and getting weaker and duller and losing altitude, these birds are finally molting.
You know … replacing the old, defective, worn-out feathers with new propellers. As the definition tells me, this “allows them to maintain proper flight, insulation, and, in some cases, to grow new, brighter plumage for breeding.”
Well, I don’t know about the breeding part. That’s their business. But yeah, give me a more colorful, vigorous, more enthusiastic team that can grow into something better than what we’ve seen since the unofficial end of an era.
And the end was marked by the final out of the 2022 NL wild-card series. Game 2. Phillies 2, Cardinals 0. Bottom of the 9th inning. Runners on first and third, two outs, a 2–2 pitch to Tommy Edman. A pop-up into foul ground. Game over. Season over. Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols walked off into retirement. A wonderful era: farewell. It is true. Nothing lasts forever.
I am in no mood to be angry. The very idea of the Cardinals being able to overcome something that pulls every team down at some point – a frustrating downturn after many years of winning baseball – is unreasonable and preposterous.
So I’ll take this rebuild. I can’t change the past, and I don’t know how many times it’s necessary for me to write or holler that the Cardinals screwed up … yeah, we know, we know, we know, we know.
So I’m moving forward. And I’ll be watching with fascination. The nonstop energy. Man, haven’t seen that around here for a while. The new president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom has done more in six months than the previous baseball regime did over the past six years.
Ownership is pouring millions and millions of dollars into regenerating the ramshackle player-development system. And millions and millions more into the overdue renovation of the spring-training headquarters. Technology upgrades. Staffing upgrades. Teaching upgrades. A more capable (and modernized) analytics department. More scouts. More transparency.
Redirecting funding for the major-league payroll for a season or two so that everything that actually leads to long-term success is restored … that’s a smart play.
Yes, even though it denies of the immediate ecstasy that comes with giving $82.5 million to Dexter Fowler, signing Miles Mikolas to a third contract extension, or paying for Brandon Crawford to come in and provide “leadership” on a team that, in 2024, was paying Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado a combined $52 million. And at that point Goldy and Nado had played a combined 22 major-league seasons. Weren’t they supposed to be leaders?
I was disappointed and unforgiving when the Cardinals lost their touch and the ability to sustain their success in the regular season and postseason.
I’ve missed the days where the Redbirds just piled up one postseason win after another … on and on. And I’ve raised plenty of hell about how this never should have happened – and it was all on ownership and the baseball front office.
But after a while, perspective seeps in. And I like perspective. It cools the brain. In that context, I appreciate what the Cardinals have done since Bill DeWitt Jr. bought the franchise before the 1996 season. Is there an encore? The Cardinals will try to give us one – while hopefully enlightening the public about what matters most in plotting out a prosperous future after a relatively brief rut of hard times.
From 1996 through 2022, I had the opportunity to cover Cardinal teams that competed in 17 postseasons. I had the pleasure of writing about the Cardinals in 150 postseason games including 22 played in the World Series and 65 more in the league championship series.
Over their superb 27-season run the Cardinals ranked first in the National League for most postseason games (150) and most postseason wins (75). They ranked first in the NL for most postseason home games (71) and most postseason home victories (43). They competed in 11 NL championship series. They raised four NL pennants and two World Series trophies.
The postseason success was extraordinary and memorable. The best times I’ve ever had while getting paid to do a job.
And the regular-season performance wasn’t so bad, either. In DeWitt’s 30 seasons as owner, the Cardinals rank third among NL sides in regular-season wins, and third for most times qualifying for the playoffs.
As a whole, the first 27 seasons of the DeWitt Era were excellent. And to deny that is crackers.
The last three seasons? Yuck. No playoffs, no big stars, a poor offense, and a winning percentage that ranked 22nd.
It happened. We have repeatedly assigned blame. We’ve hollered and sulked and made borderline cuckoo demands. (SELL THE TEAM!)
Sell the team? Yeah, because the past 30 years have been an inhumane, raging baseball underworld – filled with cruelty, torment, wailing souls and endless despair.
Here’s what I find weird about all of this.
Under DeWitt, the first 27 seasons featured an abundance of success and winning at a high level, and giving the fans an impressive galaxy of stars to entertain them. In terms of the long-term good times, there was never a time like this in franchise history. But there’s so much caterwauling and repetitive complaining over the last few years – something I’ve participated in – that it almost seems as if we’ve forgotten the glorious past … or that we’re overlooking it. I don’t understand that.
Like, we never got the chance to go to the home ballpark and watch Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, Matt Morris, Matt Holliday, Mark McGwire, Matt Carpenter, Larry Walker, Ray Lankford, Carlos Beltran, David Freese, Jason Isringhausen, Lance Berkman, Edgar Renteria, Darryl Kile, Jason Motte, Trevor Rosenthal, Lance Lynn, Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado.
We never had the chance to watch a Hall of Fame manager like Tony La Russa manage here, or marvel at how Dave Duncan transformed so many St. Louis pitchers. Or maybe we did.
We never witnessed Jeff Suppan out-pitching Roger Clemens in NLCS Game 7 (2004) or Suppan stifling the Mets in NLCS Game 7 (2006) … or, speaking of 2006, how the rookie Wainwright struck out Beltran in the bottom of the 9th with two out and the bases loaded on the best and most hellacious curveball thrown in franchise history – a dazzling pitch the put the 2006 Cardinals into the World Series against Detroit. And the first World Series title for St. Louis since 1982. Yeah, all of that is true.
Those two World Series parades?
Just a mirage, or what? No. The parades were real.
We never jumped around as David Freese battered opponents and rearranged history during an outrageous 2011 postseason filled with his fireworks … and the famous triple and homer struck by Freese in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series? Was that imaginary? No. Real. And remarkable.
Pujols with the three-homer show in 2011 World Series Game 3? Must have missed it. While playing for the Cardinals, Pujols smacked 432 home runs, delivered 1,267 RBIs, won three NL MVP awards, a couple of gold gloves, a stack of silver sluggers and was named to 10 All-Star teams.
Yadier Molina? One of the top three catchers, defensively, in MLB history. A 10-time All-Star. Winner of nine gold gloves, and four Platinum Gloves. He threw out 41 percent of the runners who dared to try stealing on him. Forget about it. But not him.
The only Cardinals with more career hits than Molina (2,168) are Stan Musial and Lou Brock. Including the postseason, Molina played 3,328 games in his big league career … and wore the Birds on the Bat in every one of them.
There was Chris Carpenter, pitching the Cardinals to a franchise-record 10 postseason wins, and stepping up as the unconquerable ace of two World Series champions, 2006 and 2011, and being the most bad-ass STL pitcher since Bob Gibson. I rather enjoyed witnessing those Carp starts.
McGwire vs. Sosa in 1998. It happened. A summertime action-adventure movie but in real baseball games.
Michael Wacha in 2013. (Who? Google it.) Jim Edmonds making spectacular, seemingly impossible catches and bombing massively important home runs deep into the night? It happened.
Rolen and Arenado performing feats of defensive artistry at third base. Happened. Young Masyn Winn emerging as the team’s most gifted defensive shortstop since Ozzie Smith. Yes, happened.
It was a career blessing for me to have a chance to chronicle all of this – the stars, the baseball heroes, some all-time greats, a couple of icons, so many winners, so many huge moments, the sea of red in a packed home ballpark. All of it. The volume of entertainment was amazing. But all of that is gone, and there’s no point in whining about it. If you really love the Cardinals, those days will live and exist as long as you live and exist.
Sell the team? No. But it’s time to sell a dream … one that comes true.
A new era is beginning in Jupiter, and I’m looking forward to seeing what forms and grows. Will the Cardinals stand proud again?
Who can answer that now?
When DeWitt and associates purchased the Cardinals around Christmastime in 1995, did we know that this beloved franchise would become a top-five MLB franchise over a 30 year period, with only the Dodgers winning more pennants than St. Louis from 1996 though 2025? Did we know that Pujols and Molina – so many other greats – would arrive?
I’m curious. I am patient. I’m fired up. Because one astonishingly great era closing down doesn’t mean everything is over. A new era can take shape over time, and make Cardinals fans happy again.
And maybe they’ll even return to Busch Stadium to reclaim the title of Best Fans In Baseball.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach. Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.