The Chris Moeller Archives

Baseball's best fans

Yes, Cardinals fans are the best in baseball. Let’s stop pretending that’s not a thing. And the conclusion is absolutely quantifiable. Cards rooters directly impact the outcome of entire seasons. Running 3.4 million per year through the turnstiles helps the 7th smallest TV market in the league translate into the 10th largest payroll. The six markets smaller (Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, San Diego, Kansas City, and Baltimore) are all perennially smaller-budgeted, and usually a lot smaller-budgeted, teams. (Yes, four of the seven smallest markets in MLB play in the same division, one that boasted three 90-win teams this year among their five teams.) Unconditional support of the Cardinals allows the front office to always make “baseball” decisions, not decisions based upon appeasing the fan base. Case in point was the decision to let the Angels outbid them for that once-in-a-generation player, “Stan Musial II,” Albert Pujols; or consider the Cardinals, in the heat of a pennant race this year, not parting with high-end minor league talent for the sake of a “win-at-all-costs” 2013 run.

It’s the players that routinely vote Cardinals fans the best in surveys (and fans do what we do in service of the players). When signing with the team, they routinely make the point to say that they signed with the purpose of playing in this particular baseball environment—and it’s not the facilities, or the weather, or the media spotlight that is drawing them. All fan bases are passionate, but Cardinals fans are also compassionate towards the team. Cheering great plays made by the other side may be aw-shucks corny too, but players on both sides don’t seem put off by the behavior. Visits to Cardinals games being played in Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Houston, Atlanta, Denver, hell, even New York and Los Angeles also speak to how red our blood runs. The powerful signal of KMOX Radio built the beast originally, and MLB franchises for Kansas City, Houston, Dallas, Denver, and Atlanta have been scissored out of what were formally garrisons of Cardinal Nation.

You don’t have to hear a highly-partisan California cousin openly concede how impressive it is to see a packed house at Busch Stadium on a Wednesday afternoon in early May to recognize this, but it helped. The third baseball venue called Busch is unquestionably the heart of the metropolis. All you have to do is visit once to see this. Even the globally-famous Gateway Arch downtown suffers currently from neglect. One of the yardsticks I’ll use to further the city’s claim to baseball superiority is that each year, TV ratings for the World Series and the All-Star Game are typically higher in St. Louis than in any other market outside of the host cities.

The backlash against Cardinal Nation is loud and growing strong. The Cardinals have morphed into possibly baseball’s most-hated team as they pile up postseason wins. Fans of large-market teams resent the feelings the Cardinals engender in them about their team having to buy their championships, and fans in small- and mid-level markets resent the Cardinals for puncturing the long-held myth about a competitive disadvantage. (Certainly, Pirates fans would have much preferred to lose to the Dodgers this year.)

 This is the kind of statement that really pisses people off but Cards’ fans loyalty is also a tribute to the human character that resides with specific intensity in America’s Great Midwest. Cards fandom is specifically generational because every generation of Cards fans has been able to boast a series of winning teams, but loyalty is also more generational in this part of the country, if for no other reason than some basic facts about North American population migration over the last century. There is here a stronger sense of region. There’s a cultural powerlessness connected to living outside the large media centers and being constantly derided for alleged hicksterism, lack of sophistication, and cultural prejudice.

Another negative refrain heard when the Cardinals are winning is that the town is a crappy town. (Not true, it’s gorgeous. It is, thanks to its location, variously, wonderfully “northern,” “southern,” “eastern,” and “western”—its history, its culture, its essential makeup.) It is, admittedly, one of the American industrial cities that has lost much population and prestige since the 1950s. Maybe that’s also why residents cling tighter to their great parochial sports success story than, say, Los Angelinos cling to the Lakers. If Cardinals fans are seen as shockingly defensive, especially me, with my rant here, again look to this feeling of cultural powerlessness.

If Cardinals’ fans are not providing the competitive advantage for their team, at least in combination with some wise club management, what else explains the obvious competitive advantage over many decades? I’m all ears.

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Dodgers fans are tying themselves in knots this month trying to convince the rest of baseball fandom that they are not the New Yankees. My favorite argument is the one that says the new ownership group is only buying talent now until the farm system can be re-stocked, as if we will ever see a Dodgers’ team payroll drop to anything below the second- or third-highest in the game. You know that Dodger fans, starved for even a single pennant over the last quarter-century, hate to root for “that type of team” that’s comprised entirely of mercenary players, yet here we are still. The team’s $8 billion TV deal should assure that money will always be as readily available in LA as celebrities willing to announce the starting lineup at Chavez Ravine. 

Meanwhile, for purposes of contrast, the Cardinals have 18 drafted players on their 25-man NLCS roster (plus two more, Wainwright and Freese, acquired when they were still minor leaguers). Ten of those 18 players are also rookies. (Does that make 2013 technically a rebuilding year for the Birds?) It’s not as if the Cardinals are awarded top picks in the draft every June either. Their year-in, year-out success on the field has set afire any hope of using that as a strategy. The Cardinals have not held a slot higher in the draft than 12th since 1998 (J.D. Drew). There are no Gerrit Coles, Bryce Harpers, Stephen Strasburgs, David Prices, Justin Uptons, Delmon Youngs, Joe Mauers, Josh Hamiltons, or Adrian Gonzalezes in this bunch, and that’s just a list of some of the #1 overall picks over the last 15 years, to say nothing of the list you could compile using each year’s top 11 picks. No team in North American professional sports can match this recent record of player development. Yikes, even I’m starting to hate the Cardinals.

posted by CM @ 7:47 PM