The Big Bad Cardinals

Let’s take four big league franchises and look at what they’ve done in the past 10 seasons.

Franchise 1 from 2002 to now.
Won 2 World Series Titles.
Won 3 Pennants.
Appeared in the LCS 5 times

Franchise 2 from 2002 to now.
Won 2 World Series Titles
Won 2 Pennants.
Appeared in the LCS 4 times.

Franchise 3 from 2002 to now.
Won 1 World Series Title.
Won 2 Pennants.
Appeared in the LCS 4 times.

Franchise 4 from 2002 to now.
Won 1 World Series Title.
Won 2 Pennants.
Appeared in the LCS 2 times.

Franchise 1 clearly has been the most dominant team of the past 10 seasons.
Franchise 2 had a great stretch but hasn’t been in the World Series nor LCS as much as Franchise 1.
Franchises 3, and 4 each won a title and a few pennants but were hardly dominant.

Which franchise do you think is which?

Franchise 4 is the Giants.
Franchise 3 is the Yankees.
Franchise 2 is the Red Sox.
Franchise 1 is the newly crowned World Champion Cardinals.

Next time in this off season you hear someone crow about how the Yankees win it every year and how they and the Red Sox just buy pennants, remember than in the past 10 years the team that dominated was actually in St. Louis.

The three other teams I mentioned had a monumental face plant in that span of time. The Giants blew the 5-0 lead in a potential World Series clincher in 2002. The Yankees had the 2004 ALCS. The Red Sox had the 2003 ALCS and the great collapse of 2011.

What was the faceplant for the Cardinals?
Where was their classic choke job?
Who was their Aaron Boone? Dave Roberts? Scott Spiezio?

The Cardinals have had the Jim Edmonds homer, Pujols against Lidge (yeah Houston won that Series… nobody remembers Game 6.)… Wainwright striking out Beltran… Carpenter shutting down the Phillies… and Game 6 of the 2011 World Series.

They broke the Padres hearts… the Astros hearts… the Mets hearts… the Tigers hearts… the Phillies and Brewers and Rangers hearts.

Remember that… the big bad Cardinals have won it again.