AN OLD DANCE TO QUITE A TUNE!

By Edwin Cooney

The year 2013 marks the fourth time the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox have played each other in a World Series. Both teams are rich in history.  Originally known as the St. Louis Brown Stockings between 1882 and 1899, they were called the Perfectos in 1899.  Since 1900, however, they have been the St. Louis Cardinals.

Some of baseball’s most colorful personalities have been Cardinals.  They include pitching stars Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean and his brother Paul (Daffy Dean). Dizzy, even as a broadcaster, took pride in slaughtering the King’s English. (“He slud into second” or he was “thowed out at third” are two examples.) A pop fly was “a lazy can of corn.” Stan “The Man” Musial, one of the nicest, most universally liked and productive players ever to play baseball, was also something of a diplomat. Scrappy third baseman John “Pepper” Martin once ordered nine-year-old Jimmy Carter to “get your ass off the field” prior to a spring training exhibition game in Americus, Georgia. (To show he meant business, Martin expertly spat tobacco juice close to young Carter’s shoes.) Bob Gibson, a fierce competitor and big winner on the mound, was a Cardinal mainstay from 1959 to 1976. With his long hair, Fu Manchu mustache and angry mound antics, “Southpaw” reliever Al Hrabosky (“the mad Hungarian”) intimidated many batters and thrilled Cardinal fans all over the Midwest.

The Red Sox were born in the newly created American League in 1901.  American League president Ban Johnson originally planned to establish the franchise in Buffalo, New York, the home of the team’s first manager Jimmy Collins, but he finally decided to put the franchise in Boston to challenge the National League’s Boston Braves.  In 1903, in just their third year of existence, the new Boston team beat the National League’s Pittsburgh Pirates in the first modern World Series.  Their success sufficiently intimidated New York Giants’ manager John J. McGraw so that he refused to allow his Giants to play the World Champs in a 1904 World Series. They were officially called the Boston Americans until December 1907 when owner John I. Taylor decided to rename them the Red Sox.

Between 1903 and 1926, when the Cardinals played in and won their first World Series, the Red Sox won five “World Championships.” In 1903 they defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates, in 1912 they upset the New York Giants, in 1915 they vanquished the Philadelphia Phillies, in 1916 they snuffed out the Brooklyn Dodgers, and in 1918 they swept the Chicago Cubs in September at the close of a World War I shortened season.  In fact, by the time the Cardinals became World Series contenders, the glory years of the Red Sox were over.

The Cardinals have won eleven World Series since 1926 beating the Yankees in 1926, the Philadelphia A’s in 1931, the Detroit Tigers in 1934, the Yankees in 1942, their hometown American League rivals the Browns in 1944, the Red Sox in 1946, the Yankees again in 1964, the Red Sox again in 1967, the Milwaukee Brewers in 1982, the Detroit Tigers in 2006 and the Texas Rangers in 2011.

Both teams enter the 2013 World Series with the best records in their respective leagues: 97 wins and 65 losses.  The Cardinals get special recognition in this era of highly paid free agents because 17 of their 25 players are homegrown Cardinals who never played for anyone else.  Boston gets recognition for having signed the right type of players for maintaining a winning clubhouse attitude, guys of character who put the team first and everything else, even money, second.

Both teams are very popular.  The Cardinals have always had a wide-ranging radio network covering much of the Northeast into the Midwest and extending deep into the South. Growing up in Northeast Oklahoma, Mickey Mantle dreamed of being a Cardinal long before the Yankees signed him in 1949.  Throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s, Cardinal baseball on the radio was as much a radio staple as “The Loan Ranger” or “The Shadow.”

Red Sox stars from Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski to Curt Schilling, David “Big Papi” Ortiz, and Dustin Pedroia have supported the Red Sox connection with “the Jimmy Fund,” a fundraising project begun in 1948 to fight childhood cancer.

Both the Cardinals and the Red Sox are most infamous for their original slowness to integrate following the Dodger’s signing of Jackie Robinson in 1945.  Cardinals star Stan Musial is credited with compelling his teammates to treat Jackie Robinson with the dignity due all opponents.  The Boston Red Sox were the last of the original major league teams to sign a black player.  They had given tryouts to players such as Willie Mays and Sam Jethroe, but failed to discern their obvious worth.  That noted, both teams these days conduct themselves as superb citizens.

The Cardinals and the Red Sox have suffered unexpected tragedies in midseason.  In 1955, the Red Sox’ Harry Agganis, a first baseman known as “The Golden Greek,” died of a pulmonary embolism on Monday, June 27^th, 1955 at the tender age of twenty-six.  On Sunday, June 22^nd, 2002, Cardinals’ pitcher Darryl Kile was found dead of a heart attack in his Chicago hotel room at the age of thirty-three.  Mike Matheny, the Cardinal’s current manager, was the first Cardinal recipient of the Darryl Kile award which defines Kile’s character as “a good teammate, a great friend, a fine father and a humble man.”

I leave it to others to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the two teams.  As this is written the series is very young.  It’s my guess that the Red Sox will win in seven games. 

However it all comes out, the World Series is an old dance to quite a tune: “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY