But I *really* hate the Cardinals.

SOunds like a good reason to hate them. Although I do get it - the early 00s Cards got ripped off several times and they made an adjustment. Perhaps what I hate is that they symbolize the modern idea of championship baseball: do just enough to get into the playoffs and then catch some breaks. It's ugly.

I'm not defending or arguing against the hate. I don't care if people hate or like the team, I just prefer that they are factually correct in their hatred :)

The 2006 team was not the 1987 Twins level bad of a team that didn't belong in the post season. Their final record was more complicated than that.

You keep saying this, but I feel it's quite misleading. With exactly 3 weeks left in the 2006 season (Sept 10) the Cardinals actually had the 3rd best NL record, but with six teams within five games of them.

I posted a link on my comment, September 16th, the Cardinals had the second best record in the NL, had a 6.5 game lead over the Reds(not the Astros who had a fantastic finish to make it a contest) with 15 games remaining. The Cardinals were going to win that division and played like a team that didn't care.

Man, it must really suck to be you.

This does provide one more reason to hope Jack Morris falls short in this year's HOF vote (not that any more are needed): the perfect super-nova of SBB agony and self-pity that will follow.

Not at all; I just see objectively. The 2012 Tigers are a flawed team too, and 88 wins is nothing special -- though they at least can say they won their division. If the Tigers and Cardinals play in the World Series, I'd expect it to pass Rays-Phillies for lowest-rated World Series ever. If I wasn't a fan of either team, I woudn't watch either.

More "intellectually," a Tigers-Cardinals really isn't the "World Series" in the true meaning of that term, as it doesn't match the two best or two most-accomplished teams from the American and National Leauges. It's the "MLB Playoff Finals." We shouldn't kid ourselves and pretend that break from tradition hasn't diminished fan interest -- it clearly has.

If it happens once in a while, yes. If it happens every ####### year, no.

I agree with this. Of course I'm going to root for my team no matter how they make the post season, but ultimately you want to see the best team (or arguably the best team) win it all a majority of the time.

I get very tired of hearing what a great baseball town St. Louis is. Downtown St. Louis is a depressing dump.

Well, the "best fans in baseball" tag is not the right way to say it, which I'm sure some people find irritating. Cardinals fans are no better or worse than fans of other teams.

But St. Louis really does care more about the local nine than any other city, if determined by the following method: Sample the population in a 50-mile radius of the stadium of every major league team, quantifying each individual's level of devotion. St. Louis would have the highest fandom/capita. It is a smallish city with a poorish economy that sells tickets, merchandise, etc. with ease. And this was equally true prior to 2006, even though at that point they'd had 8 consecutive failed trips to the post-season and 24 years since a title.

IOW there is a pretty reasonable rationale by which St. Louis is the country's best baseball city. There is just no other metro area that becomes one giant baseball pep-rally to the degree that it happens there.

Not at all; I just see objectively.

*rolls eyes.*

If the Tigers and Cardinals play in the World Series, I'd expect it to pass Rays-Phillies for lowest-rated World Series ever.

since when does anyone on BTF care about ratings? the writers and some other pundits will get their panties in a bunch over this since it gives them something to write about, meanwhile MLB as a business will continue to gross over $5B, neck and neck with NFL without the skeezy gambling factor.

Although I do get it - the early 00s Cards got ripped off several times and they made an adjustment.

No. They did not 'make an adjustment.' They got lucky.

But St. Louis really does care more about the local nine than any other city, if determined by the following method: Sample the population in a 50-mile radius of the stadium of every major league team, quantifying each individual's level of devotion. St. Louis would have the highest fandom/capita. It is a smallish city with a poorish economy that sells tickets, merchandise, etc. with ease. And this was equally true prior to 2006, even though at that point they'd had 8 consecutive failed trips to the post-season and 24 years since a title.

Local TV ratings is constantly among the highest in the sport, not the highest every year, but generally speaking the tv shares are higher than almost any other city (New York and Boston do pretty well) heck even exhibition games like the All star game, gets high ratings. Of course TV ratings isn't the end all be all of fandom, but it's a starting point.

Logically speaking, the city has not much other entertainment, it's not like real cities and has a night life of any significance, doesn't have a theater district(it has two theaters---not movie I'm talking about for plays) so it doesn't have the broadway shows to compete against, strong portion of minority population in a city without a professional basketball team (or even a good college team) means that the sporting interest is split among a crappy football team that threatens to leave every year, a hockey team that has never won anything, and the Cardinals.

The Cardinals fan base is strong, because we don't have any other #### out here.

Edit: meant to add, that this year the Tigers and the Reds had the highest rating shares in MLB.

But St. Louis really does care more about the local nine than any other city, if determined by the following method: Sample the population in a 50-mile radius of the stadium of every major league team, quantifying each individual's level of devotion. St. Louis would have the highest fandom/capita.

This seems...totally unverifiable. And also probably not true.

I've spent time it STL. Their fans are like any other fans. It strikes me as a city with only one long-term big-three sports franchise that also happens to be really successful.

EDIT: Coke of sorts to cardsfanboy

The hatred of the Cardinals really confuses me. I'm as astounded as the writer at it. Having lived in New York, Los Angeles/Anaheim, and Oakland/SF, I really do think the fans are better here. The fact that people keep repeating the "best fans in the country" thing can be irritating to people in other cities, but in my experience it's basically true. The depth of affection for the Cardinals easily surpasses anything I experienced in California, and there isn't the self-loathing angst that I found in New York. I just don't see the hatred for individual Cardinal players that I saw for Met and Yankee players in New York. If the Cardinals lose a close series in the playoffs as they did in 1985, 1987, 1996, 2001 and 2005, it isn't because somebody "choked", or because somebody lacks fortitude, it's because baseball is a game with winners and losers and sometimes other good teams win. I don't see the attention-seeking whining that I saw among Met and Yankee fans in New York. A's fans are similar, except there aren't very many of us.

This seems...totally unverifiable. And also probably not true.

If it is true, we'd see things like great attendance, high local merchandise sales, high TV ratings, and a reputation as a great baseball city. The collateral things that one would expect to see if it was true are there. So I think it is unverifiable, but probably true.

If it is true, we'd see things like great attendance, high local merchandise sales, high TV ratings, and a reputation as a great baseball city.

And these things are true only of St. Louis? The Cardinals are a good team in an otherwise unoccupied sports market; I would expect a good sized fan base.

Best in the entire sport? I don't know how anyone could say that claim was "probably true"

Despite being a "thinking" fan, I don't give a rip about pythag records.

Every fraternity needs a Stork.

The fact that people keep repeating the "best fans in the country" thing can be irritating to people in other cities, but in my experience it's basically true.

I like that badge, but it's a purely subjective badge of honor. I imagine that Boston/Philly/New York/Chicago fans are as devoted as Cardinal fans, but due to difference in "personality" they exhibit it differently. The Reds fans are probably the most comparable to Cardinal fans. Cardinals get the reputation partially earned and partially as a self fulfilling repetition.

You hear national announcers all the time praising the Cardinal fans when they come to the games, part of that is because of the moniker, but some of that is coming from comments they are getting in interviews of other players and their own observation of the fans. But again this is because they are looking for these positives. Just like in Philly, they aren't the only city who has had bad fan actions, but when a bad fan actions happens in Philly it gets remembered because that is Philly's rep. Same action in another city and it's "just a bad seed".


Same with St Louis, yes St Louis will applaud another teams player good performance. An opposing pitcher leaves the game in the 8th inning with a shutout, he is going to get an applause. I'm sure other cities do that, I find it hard to believe that St Louis is the only city that would do that. Another player makes a fine play, he's going to get an applause. We are paying fans, paying to see the best, when they do something exceptional, regardless of the uniform, you have to appreciate it. I'm sure other cities are the same way and it just doesn't get mentioned because they don't have the self created moniker of best fans in baseball.

Those are the actions that people are pointing to when they point to best fans. They are a mostly positive group, booing is kept to a minimum(more now than there was 10 years ago as the population makeup has changed) Even applauding a guy having a bad game to "give him energy" isn't unheard of. But again, this is probably standard in other cities, just not reported as much. Standing ovations for new players acquired in mid season, I'm sure every team does that.

Having lived in New York, Los Angeles/Anaheim, and Oakland/SF, I really do think the fans are better here.

MLB should expand outside those locations.


Despite being a "thinking" fan, I don't give a rip about pythag records.

Every fraternity needs a Stork.

Always important to be super specific here, I guess: I don't give a rip in determining who won the season. If you asked me about next year, sure, I'll take it into consideration.

Always important to be super specific here, I guess: I don't give a rip in determining who won the season. If you asked me about next year, sure, I'll take it into consideration.

The inability of stat dorks to distinguish predictive analysis from "things that have actually happened in the world" is...tedious.

The Tigers were awful from the late 80's until the current run started in 2006. They had a couple of 87 win seasons here and there, but they must have had the worst record in baseball over that period. Everyone remembers the Spiders-esque Trammell team in 2003, but they had several other seasons during that period that were comparable.

1996 Tigers - worst pitching ever.

Having lived in New York, Los Angeles/Anaheim, and Oakland/SF, I really do think the fans are better here.


Yes, we all particularly enjoyed the classiness of Cardinals fans threatening Keith Tkachuk and his family during the 2004 WS because Tkachuk had the gall to attend the game and root for his hometown team in the WS despite saying repeatedly he enjoyed playing for the Blues.

The fans are no better there than anywhere else. It's a bunch of poppycock.

cfb

your frame of reference is off if you regard the reds fans base as a net positive

this is the fan base that:

--drove adam dunn out of town
--harrassed and nitpicked ken griffey jr thoughout his stay
--booed barry larkin (don't anyone call me a liar. i was there not once, not twice, but three random times for booing of barry larkin. barry larkin people. barry larkin booed--unacceptable)
--had many empty seats in the stadium just this past september as their team was winning the division


to their credit they adore brandon phillips.

but this is a rough fan base with little memory save for perceived slights and perceived failures

rough crowd. rough, rough crowd

for the record i blame marty for some of this nonsense. he really whips folks into a frenzy.

he must have been a roman coliseum play by play guy in a former life

The inability of stat dorks to distinguish predictive analysis from "things that have actually happened in the world" is...tedious.

It is you who are confused here. Citing the Cards' pythag record directly addresses the objection that the "best" teams deserve to be in the post-season. This year they are clearly one of the 2 or 3 best teams in the league. If someone wants to say "the teams with the most wins should be in the playoffs," then fine -- pythag is obviously not a relevant response to that.

your frame of reference is off if you regard the reds fans base as a net positive

I'm mostly going on by the last couple of years over anything, their press sucks and having Marty Brenneman as their announcer, will color their actions, but it was the only team that I could think of who's fans have a similar temperament of the Cardinals with a long history of baseball. I think they are a little bitter right now, but that is only temporary in my opinion.

edit: missed the booing Larkin part. That is unacceptable. (but Cardinals have booed star players in the recent past Edmonds, Lankford being the most obvious)

Yes, we all particularly enjoyed the classiness of Cardinals fans threatening Keith Tkachuk and his family during the 2004 WS because Tkachuk had the gall to attend the game and root for his hometown team in the WS despite saying repeatedly he enjoyed playing for the Blues.

Don Denkinger also appreciates their passion.

Don Denkinger also appreciates their passion.

He honestly does. He was at the Cardinals baseball writers dinner, he signs autographs with pictures of the play, he attends lectures in St Louis.

Citing the Cards' pythag record directly addresses the objection that the "best" teams deserve to be in the post-season.

No it doesn't. This is like the third time you've tried this gambit and it's still a massive fail. Other than to a rump niche of clueless and needy stat dorks, "best" is measured by actual wins, not pythag wins.

The hatred of the Cardinals really confuses me.

In addition to my remarks in #13, let me take a moment to point out that absolutely no other team is dumber or more belligerent about throwing at batters. They retaliate for things that were obviously accidents, they escalate during retaliation by going for the head or the knee, they'll keep on retaliating for two or three days without any return provocation, and then when you call them out on it, they whine like a dog watching a plate of bacon. It's maddening.

The Cardinals are a good team in an otherwise unoccupied sports market; I would expect a good sized fan base.

Well, they have an NFL team that won the Super Bowl and have kept an NHL hockey team for the last 45 years. It is no less "occupied" than KC, Cinncinnati, Milwaukee, and any number of other major league towns.

Also,I haven't made any statement that the city's baseball-centricity has arisen without causes - of course it has. But that doesn't mean it isn't a fact.

Best in the entire sport? I don't know how anyone could say that claim was "probably true"


Where did I say "best"?

More "intellectually," a Tigers-Cardinals really isn't the "World Series" in the true meaning of that term, as it doesn't match the two best or two most-accomplished teams from the American and National Leauges. It's the "MLB Playoff Finals."

For the last 43 years---about 40% of the time the World Series has existed---teams other than those with the best record in each league have played in the postseason, and in many of those years these lesser teams have won.

Your point seems to be that at least (pre-1995) those teams had won something, i.e., a division title (even if it came with the league's 3rd- or 4th-best record), whereas now, some sh!tty team with the league's 5th-best record (among 33% more teams than pre-1994) can make it in without having the decency to even win their own division.

I get that, and part of me agrees to an extent. Would four 4-team divisions and the elimination of the Wild Card make things better? No, because that 96-win second-place team will be bitter about the 83-win other-division-winners getting in. So you have to have a Wild Card.

Maybe the second Wild Card is the straw that breaks the camel's back; without it, the Cardinals don't get in this year, and the hate that seems to have metastasized in 2012 would exist only as smaller pockets of fans done wrong by earlier Cardinal teams.

But now, by squeaking in a second year in row, with their previous "championship" in 2006 almost universally viewed as lame (even by me), I understand the "hate," although I think it's more like people are just sick of their act and would rather see anyone else advance.

"best" is measured by actual wins, not pythag wins.

I'm with SBB on this. CFB, nobody cares about Pythag records. A 93-win team is a team that wins 93 games, not an 88-win team that "should have" won 93 games.

I think teams that have equal Pythag records are equally good. If one of them won five more games than the other one, that means they were five games luckier. Does that make me a stats geek?

Does that make me a stats geek?

Of course it does! The only "lucky" teams are the ones that only win 88 games but still get to play in the postseason!

By the way, does the fact that the Cardinals lost seven games in 2012 in which they had the lead with 2 outs in the final inning evidence that they are unlucky, or evidence that they're bad?

The depth of affection for the Cardinals easily surpasses anything I experienced in California, and there isn't the self-loathing angst that I found in New York.

see? they're not doing it right.

The Reds fans are probably the most comparable to Cardinal fans.

actually, i think this is not a bad comp. similar demographics (midwestern town with not a lot otherwise for major sports), long tradition. i've heard cincy fans being described with the same sort of phrases as card fans. the slavish devotion to pete rose speaks well for their fandom, not so much for their judgment, but hey they are fan-atics.

Where did I say "best"?

Sorry, "cares more about their team per-capita than any other fan base."

I've lived in STL, it's a good baseball town, but not appreciably more than other places I've lived, which have included Detroit, the afore-mentioned Milwaukee, and four other cities with MLB teams. Perennially good teams tend to have perenially good fan-bases, with the possible exception of the big wallet-big expectation northeastern markets. Just because the STL fanbase likes to call themselves the best fans in baseball doesn't make it so. There are plenty of markets where fans care a lot about the team on a "per-capita basis."

Citing the Cards' pythag record directly addresses the objection that the "best" teams deserve to be in the post-season.

No it doesn't. This is like the third time you've tried this gambit and it's still a massive fail.

By "best" I simply mean most talented. For example, if you were trying to determine which NL team(s) were most likely to win the WS over the AL pennant winner, you would be better off using pythag than actual win totals. I don't see how anyone (even SBB) could disagree with that. If you want to say the teams with the most wins are most "deserving" of playing in the post-season, that's fine. Or choose any word you want. My point is simply that to the extent someone believes the strongest teams should compete to win the pennant and play in the WS, pythag record is a perfectly valid way to establish that.

I think teams that have equal Pythag records are equally good

That can be obviously misleading in the short run. Let's say the Dodgers play the Cubs in a five-game series, c1966. Koufax, Drysdale, Osteen, and Sutton throw shutouts and the Dodgers win each game 5-0. The Dodgers decide to let Soupy Sales pitch the next game, and lose 25-5. The teams' Pythagorean records are thus identical. But the Dodgers are better, and would win any series they played, long or short, against the Cubs. Admittedly, Soupy is a weakness.

We assume that over 162 games such effects will even out, but I think one would have to look in a pretty "granular" way at what happened in the discrete games, to make sure it evened out.

A more basic point where I'd totally agree is that five games in the standings isn't a heck of a lot of an edge after 162. Two teams can have the appropriate Pythags for the five-game difference and still be equally good for most intents and purposes.

I think teams that have equal Pythag records are equally good. If one of them won five more games than the other one, that means they were five games luckier. Does that make me a stats geek?

Meh. Pythag is supposed to be better than W-L because it smoothes the run distribution over one big event rather than 162 smaller, discrete events. But it's still not necessarily a determinate of "best." What about teams that have a Pythag influenced by injuries or trades or call-ups? And then there's the unbalanced schedule.

I'm not saying you would disagree with that, of course, but I'm just pointing it out. It's not like every team plays the same schedule with a non-changing lineup of players. There's room for interpretation in the data.

And as to the Cardinals – they were a team that I grew up not hating so much as fearing (I was raised a Cubs fan c1966, so the Cardinals were always rivals and always better than the Cubs). Indifference set in during the 1970s; I really liked the 1980s version of the team (who couldn't like Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee? and ex-Dernière was a big Cardinals fan, which helped reconcile me to them). Indifference grew again in the 1990s, when I watched mostly AL ball, and by the time the Cardinals were prominent again, they just didn't have players I really liked. I don't hate players, but I didn't thrill to Jim Edmonds somersaulting all over the place; Pujols was a distant guy to me, hard to like; David Eckstein is sort of the anti-Ozzie; I didn't much have an impression of Rolen; who can really cheer for Jeff Suppan? I dunno. It's extremely subjective; they just rubbed me the wrong way. And then the 2011 Series happened and I can't imagine liking the Cardinals again in this lifetime.

I do think the world of Chris Carpenter. There is apparently no way to stop him in the postseason. His start tonight might just entice me to watch.

I'm with SBB on this. CFB, nobody cares about Pythag records. A 93-win team is a team that wins 93 games, not an 88-win team that "should have" won 93 games.

At no point in time did I mention Pythag records in this thread.

I think that a teams won/loss record is what you start examining a team by and using other evaluations to examine how good the team really was, but ultimately won loss record matters.

I have only mentioned that the 83 win Cardinals were a better than 83 win team, because they just didn't care, up 6.5 games with 15 games to go and the second best record in the NL, is an indication of a pretty good team, regardless of what happened afterwards. Obviously the Mets were the best team in the NL that year, to argue different would be silly.

Ok, At no point in time did I mention Pythag records in this thread.

Sorry, CFB, collateral damage: I've never let facts get in the way of my comments before, and I'm not going to start now.

Just because the STL fanbase likes to call themselves the best fans in baseball doesn't make it so

Didn't the "best fans" notion get legs from national MSM types like Jason Stark, not from some self-designation? I can remember hearing it on national TV broadcasts since the '80's. If it was just the Mayor of St. Louis saying it or the local broadcast team then nobody would give it a second thought.

bob

i am a one trick pony when it comes to carpenter. he is the modern day spud chandler. hurt a lot but when healthy he's pretty great

Didn't the "best fans" notion get legs from national MSM types like Jason Stark, not from some self-designation? I can remember hearing it on national TV broadcasts since the '80's. If it was just the Mayor of St. Louis saying it or the local broadcast team then nobody would give it a second thought.

Yes and no, it originated in a Sporting News article, but the Sporting News was produced in St Louis at the time, so their perceptions were colored. The national media picked up on it and ran with it. Along with the St Louis fans constantly repeating it.

My complaint is that they always have good players. Try to put together a list of players, since the beginning of the McGwire era, who A) joined the Cardinals (whether as free agents or from the minors), and B) were disappointing with the Cardinals.

I don't like the Cardinals either, but this is a pretty poor reason to hate them. Maximizing the performance of your players isn't luck; it's a skill. It comes from careful player evaluation, combined with coaching, training, setting a proper course of expectations, and attitude. And maybe steroids.

I hate the Cardinals with the white hot burning intensity of a thousand suns:

1) Tony LaRussa, the man who singlehandledly increased the time of a game by a half hour
2) Smug, self satisfied fans
3) Continually sneaking into the playoffs with inferior records
4) Having quadruple A guys get hot at just the right time
5) Sneaking cash into incompetent umpires pockets to "interpret" an infield fly call like Rodney Dangerfield in "Caddyshack"-- "keep it fair, keep it fair".
6) Joaquin Andujar
7) Joe Buck
8) Jack Buck (just for fathering Joe Buck)
9) Ozzie Smith's stupid backflips
10) "Busch" beer

None of this has anything to do with Friday night, of course.

phredbird knew he was going to take a lot of crap in this thread, but he deserves a primey for #46.

When did you start hating the Cardinals? Obviously everyone hates them now, but for me it was October 19, 2006

I didn't hate them in 1985. I thought it was cool that two teams from my home state were in the World Series.

But this pretty much sealed the deal as the Cards being one of my most hated teams.

If the Yanks become mediocre, and the Red Sox don't bounce back, I can see the Cards becoming the team everyone loves to hate.

Your point seems to be that at least (pre-1995) those teams had won something, i.e., a division title (even if it came with the league's 3rd- or 4th-best record), whereas now, some sh!tty team with the league's 5th-best record (among 33% more teams than pre-1994) can make it in without having the decency to even win their own division.

That's a big part of it. The old postseason wasn't so much "playoffs" as it was matchups of teams that had already won something challenging and worthwhile and were just trying to win what the Euro/Anglo soccer fan would call more "silverware" by winning each of the next two postseason series.

That, IMHO, is a model more in touch with the uniqueness of baseball and I still don't really think the "playoff" model, with its extra "excitement" and "upsets" works for baseball. (Aesthetically, of course. It very well may be better for business, but that's an empirical question.)

When did you start hating the Cardinals?

Who can remember that far back? It goes back past the 1984 Sandberg game. It's like it was part of puberty - at some point you grew up, put away childish things, and started hating the Cardinals.

(What perpetuates it, of course, is this notion of "OMG greatest fans in BASEBALL #1#1#1" that gets put forward. I can easily root for them to lose just so that those greatest fans can choke on it.)

cfb

apparently folks forget it now but it was bob costas who took the ball and ran with it as the nbc ballgame of the week guy

between the st louis roots of tsn, bob and joe g one could allege it was a 'plot'

ha, ha

Harv, my one association with Spud Chandler is this amazing Charles Conlon photograph. It's of his wife and son at a game in 1942. Nothing in it truly identifies it as a baseball photo, yet somehow the idiom and the way it's framed make it impossible to be anything else. I have seen few photos that made me wish more that the people in them had happy lives.